shocked his congregation in the malarious village by denying that there was any authority of Scripture for the Presbyterian form of church government.[26] His views became increasingly radical and in 1829 he left Indiana, accepted the chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in the University of the City of New York, and became a Swedenborgian. He was a life-long student and a writer of recognized ability. The Baptists organized the first Protestant church in Indiana in 1798. The Methodists formed a society in 1803, and in 1805 Peter Cartwright, one of the great pioneer Methodist evangelists, was at work in the State. The oldest Presbyterian society was formed in 1806, near Vincennes, then the capital, and William Henry Harrison, the governor, who had married a Presbyterian wife, was numbered among its parishioners.[27] The very nature of the pioneer life compelled the simplest of religious as well as of social observances. The meeting-houses were of logs, and the ministers were often tillers of the soil. One of the early Presbyterian clergymen aided the support of his family by farming, writing the deeds, wills, and other formal papers of his neighbors, by teaching singing, and by making shoes, and from all these sources of labor, including his pay as minister, he averaged only $80 a year for a period of sixteen years. Father (the Rev. James) Havens, one of the famous apostles of Methodism, who, in 1824, rode what was known as the Connersville circuit, embracing several county seats, received $56.06-1/2 for his year’s services. This does not indicate indifference among the scattered flock, but a lack of actual money. Instances are reported of men splitting rails or working in the harvest field at fifty cents a day in order to aid their ministers. Meetings were held in wayside cabins, in which the near neighbors gathered, and after the service the housewife prepared a meal for the clerical guest, and for those of the little congregation who remained. The ministers of the day were not always profound scholars, but they were light-bearers, who went ahead of the schoolmasters, communicating to scores of the youth of the new land an interest in the world of men and books. It has been said that three-fourths of the early students of Asbury (DePauw) University came from homes that were visited by the itinerant Methodist preachers.[28]