He spent about a fortnight there, preaching in Charlottetown and St. Peters, with small tokens of success, and returned mourning the spiritual condition of the people. After much thought and prayer, he was married on Feb. 17, 1784, to Miss Mary Gay, of Cumberland, an estimable woman, who had been led to Christ about two years previously under his preaching. She was possessed of gifts and grace as her letters testify, and was eminently qualified for the high duties of a minister's wife. So extensive was the territory and so great the spiritual needs of the people that the young missionary of twenty three years of age, with a burning passion for souls, wrote to John Wesley in 1783, earnestly requesting him to send missionaries to Nova Scotia, who replied that he had hopes of sending assistance a few months later when Conference met. There being no missionaries, however, sent from Great Britain, he naturally looked towards the United States for help, and a few months after his marriage, he started for Baltimore where the Conference was to be held under the superintendence of Dr. Coke. He travelled by way of Boston and preached twice in the city, when under the first sermon one person was converted, and at the second service several were deeply convinced of sin. As he passed through New York he preached in the Methodist Church, and after the services visited a dying woman, whom he found in great distress about her spiritual condition, and he had the great joy of leading her to Christ, as she died next day, shouting, "Glory! Glory be to thy blessed name!" On his journey he preached at every opportunity and always with blessed results, and before the Conference assembled in Baltimore on December 24, 1784, he gave Dr. Coke a detailed account of the state of the work in Nova Scotia, and the Conference appointed Freeborn Garretson, and James O. Cromwell to labor in that field. Both of these ministers hastened at once to that province, but William Black spent some time in the United States preaching here and there, and called for his wife who was visiting her friends in Massachusetts, she having been born in Boston, and with the tedious travel he did not reach Halifax till the end of May. As he was returning homeward, he and his wife spent over three months in Boston, where he had the honor of laying the foundations of Methodism in that city, "the first Methodist preacher who appeared in New England after the visit of Charles Wesley," says Dr. Abel Stevens. He preached in several of the churches, removing from one to another, as the edifice became too small to accommodate the crowds who flocked to hear the young minister from Canada, until the largest church was filled to overflowing with three thousand people. A gracious revival followed this visit, and as there was no Methodist organization, the converts united with other denominations. After a period of thirty years, he preached again in the city in 1822, and many hung around the