On Saturday, May 6, we went to Elizabethtown. In crossing the Narrows we saw for the first time a vessel moving without sails, and to us it was a great curiosity, neither Bishop Asbury nor myself ever having seen a steamboat before. We gazed upon it with wonderful interest, as the following extracts from our journals will show. The bishop wrote, “My attention was strongly excited by the steamboat. This is, indeed, a great invention.” My record reads thus: “At Elizabeth Point we saw a packet which goes by steam, a wheel on each side like a flutter wheel. The vessel is about eighty feet long, and travels one mile against wind and tide in about eighteen minutes.” All this must sound strange to the reader who is familiar with steamboats, floating palaces, and steamships that plow the ocean, and bring continents into one neighborhood. At Elizabethtown we stopped with Rev. Thomas Morrell, who lived there in a fine mansion. The bishop and Mr. Morrell were very intimate. They loved each other as brothers, and often corresponded. He considered Mr. Morrell wise in counsel. Mr. Morrell had been an officer under Washington during the Revolutionary War, and had been wounded in battle. He was also a bold soldier of the cross, and filled some very important appointments. He was then in deep mourning, having lost his excellent wife, the mother of the amiable and beloved Francis Asbury Morrell of the New Jersey Conference. Methodism was introduced here as early as 1785 by John Haggarty. Here Rev. George G. Cookman made his earliest efforts in this country. Joseph Holdich in the early part of his ministry preached here, and here he found his excellent wife. In the old Episcopal church Samuel Spaggs was rector. He preached in John-street Church, New York, during the whole of the Revolutionary War, being then a minister in our Church. He died here, and had a tablet in the old church. At Elizabethtown we met Bishop M’Kendree. He preached in the morning, and Bishop Asbury in the evening. Bishop M’Kendree and I went to Newark, where he preached from Prov. i, 23, “Turn you at my reproof,” etc. Here we saw the Rev. John Dow, and at his request I accompanied him to Belleville, four miles from Newark, a pretty little village on the Passaic, where I preached in the evening from 1 John i, 9. Methodism was introduced in Belleville much earlier than in Newark, and a stone church built. John Dow was a local elder, a man of fine talent and sterling integrity. He was several times a member of the Legislature. The Rev. Isaac N. Felch of the New Jersey Conference married his daughter. Here the eloquent Nicholas Snethen used to tend a mill; here he was converted, and commenced his first public exercises. Here Peter P. Sandford was converted and went out into the itinerant work. This is enough to give this place a Methodistic celebrity.