THE likeness on a foregoing- page will bring to, mind of many of the older Methodists in Southside Virginia and in Eastern North Carolina the face of one now numbered among the Old Guard of the Conference. Time has been gentle to him. It is almost incredible that features so fresh and ungrooved, have braved the storms seventy years. • Age has not dimmed the luster of the eye, nor added an acid to the genial heart. A sunny, quick, charming veteran was before the camera when that photograph was made.
He was born in the county of Gates, near Sunsbury, North Carolina, on the 13th of September, 1810. Born again and joined the church at a camp meeting in the neighborhood, in the month of October, 1827. On the mother's side, he is a descendant, in a direct line, of the old Alston family of North Carolina.
The Riddicks in several counties of lower Virginia and North Carolina are a numerous class of people, and have branched off to such an extent, that many of them claim no kinship at all. For many years they were a gay and worldly people, with little predilection for the claims of religion, but at present many of them are zealous members of the church, and at least four of them are preachers of the gospel. The subject of this sketch was the first of the name to become a minister and member of the Virginia Conference.
He received the best education that the neighboring schools afforded at that day ; and in his sixteenth year went to Suffolk, Virginia, to become a clerk in the mercantile establishment of his brother-in-law, James McGuire. Here he was brought in contact with the most favorable religious influences. James McGuire was distinguished for his piety and liberality, and his house was the welcome home of Methodist preachers. Here the old veterans of that day used to linger and rest for months at a time. The venerable Dr. Daniel Hall spent much of his time with the family, and it was here that the subject of this sketch formed. the acquaintance of Rev. Melville B. Cox, and became intensely exercised with the desire of going with him to Africa. It was here he met, occasionally, such of the old divines as Bishop McKendree, Henry Holmes, H.. G. Leigh, Ethelbert Drake, Benjamin Devaney, Martin P. Parks, and others.
It was at this friendly house that William A. Smith met for the first time Miss Miller, a youthful female preacher of considerable attraction and intelligence, who afterwards became his first wife.
With such associations young Riddick became imbued with the Spirit of Christ, and the spirit of preaching. But for the present he shrunk back, from a sense of his insufficiency.
In 1831 he removed to Brunswick county to engage in the mercantile business with his brother, who had already gone to the same county. Here it was his good fortune to come into contact with that good man,. John Wesley Childs, who encouraged and confirmed his purpose to prepare at once to travel and preach.
After great agony of. mind he closed his business and went with Childs to Conference at Norfolk, in February, 1832, and took an appointment under John Early, as Presiding Elder, and was sent to help Jesse Powers on Amelia Circuit.
At the ensuing Conference, held in Petersburg, February, 1833, James A. Riddick was received on trial, and sent as assistant with John H. Watson to Prince Edward' Circuit.
In 1834 he was put in charge of Mecklenburg Circuit, where he had much success and large revivals of religion, assisted a part of the year by James E. Joiner.
In 1835, his third year in the Conference, he was appointed to Shockoe Hill, in the city of Richmond, and for seven years following he continued to fill some of the most important stations in the Conference.
At the Portsmouth Conference of 1842, his health having declined a good deal, he asked for a country appointment, and was sent to Amelia Circuit, where he commenced his labors ten years before, and has never desired a town appointment since.
During this year he was happily married to Miss Judith A. Gregory, a young lady admirably suited to the itinerant work, and has always been very popular among the people as a preacher's wife.
He has since filled the following appointments : 1843-4, Charlotte Circuit ; 1845, Amelia Circuit again. For several years after this he took no work on account of ill-health.
In 1850 he resumed his labors, and was assigned to Amelia Circuit for the fourth time. From this circuit he was appointed to the old Randolph Macon District, where he remained four years. At the request of some of the trustees of Murfreesboro' Female College, he was then made Presiding Elder of the newly formed district called Murfreesboro.
Having served here for four years, he was appointed to Sussex Circuit in 1859 and '60, which brought him to the beginning of the late calamitous war.
In view of declining health and the lengthening shadows of life, he took a supernumerary relation at the Conference of 1861, and settled himself on a farm at Stony Creek, Virginia, on the Petersburg and Weldon railroad, where he was marvelously preserved through the whole war, and where he continues to live in much comfort, discharging the duties of a minister in the surrounding country, as health and strength may permit.
The Rev. J. A. Riddick has always been classed among the best business men of the Conference, and although frequently urged to become an agent for colleges, and the book business, he has invariably declined on the ground of his preference for the regular pastoral work. For a number of years, he was secretary of the Virginia Conference Missionary Society, and assistant secretary of the Conference. He considers that he received a series of the best appointments that the Conference afforded, and has no' cause to complain on this score.
And in addition to this, he considers himself greatly blessed in his' domestic relations, having one of the best wives in the world, six daughters-three married and three single-and one only son, James Gregory, born on the day of the Bethel fight, 10th June, 1861, now in his 18th year,
a member of the church, and doing well, at Randolph Macon College.
His old friends will pray that he may live in peace, and go down to his last resting places. 4 one who wraps around him the drapery of his couch, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Source:
Sketches of the Virginia Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. by Rev. John J. Lafferty Richmond, Va., Christian Advocate
Office 1880.
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