Coinciding with Bishop Cheshire's efforts to expand and revive the missionary work of the church in the mountains, a movement was initiated to create a missionary district from the western counties of the Diocese of North Carolina. At the diocesan convention of 1894 a committee was appointed to study the advisability of requesting the General Convention to organize the western counties of the state into a missionary jurisdiction. It was felt by many that the present Diocese was too large to be adequately administered and supervised by one bishop. In his address to the convention of 1895 Bishop Cheshire substantiated this view when he reported that during the past year he had been able to devote only nine weeks to the western section of the state, which embraced nearly thirty counties. The Bishop was "in sentiment" strongly opposed to a division of his Diocese, for he disliked seeing the church in North Carolina divided further. Also, he had become deeply interested in his mountain missions and was loath to relinquish them. He realized, however, the impossibility of properly serving such a large territory. Moreover, he was determined not to make the mistake which he thought Bishop Atkinson, in 1877, and Bishop Lyman, in 1882, had made when they opposed the formation of a new diocese. In his opinion, a bishop "makes a mistake, when he opposes the well-settled convictions of his clergy and people upon a matter affecting the development of the Diocese."[36] When the diocesan convention met in May, 1895, the Committee on the Proposed Missionary Jurisdiction recommended that the General Convention be requested to set apart the western section of the Diocese of North Carolina as a missionary jurisdiction. It was further recommended that the line of division should be the eastern boundaries of the counties of Alleghany, Wilkes, Alexander, Catawba, Lincoln and Gaston. Bishop Cheshire had suggested to the committee this territorial division. Although it meant a great loss of strength to his own Diocese, the Bishop believed that the missionary jurisdiction should be made large enough to be of importance, and that it should be created with the view of its becoming a diocese at some future date. The convention adopted the committee's recommendations, and instructed its deputies to present them to the General Convention.