McCoy FAMILY STORIES
cont....

These genealogy notes and historic papers of the McCoy family in the United States are from a collection found in the files and family bible of Texas Mae Charles. It is not known whether she wrote all of them or were written by someone else.   Some of these notes are transcriptions of actual letters between family member. The information in these records are incomplete.


Third Generation

To Rev. William and Elizabeth (Royse) McCoy, were born six children being the third generation. Viz: James, John, Isaac, Sallie, Lydia and Royse.

James McCoy

James McCoy, eldest son born in Fayette Co., Virginia about 1776, came to Indiana (Ky. 1789 and) Territory from Kentucky in 1800. He married Miss Nancy Lane. He was received into the Silver Creek Baptist Church by experience and baptism Oct. 1801, and the next month he was chosen Church Clerk, which he held until October 1816, when he and his wife moved to Washington County, Ind.

He was the first man to drive a team of four horses across the "Flowers Gap Knob". He was a schoolteacher and preacher. His teaching and preaching was very acceptable to the people. He and his wife and son, Milton, died of Cholera in Salem, Ind. 1833, during a fearful epidemic of Cholera. He wrote at the time of his sickness to his brother John McCoy, in Clark County, just these words, "We sicken, we die". His brother John rushed forward to his relief, and the epidemic was so fearful that he was the only one with him when he died, and he (John) alone prepared his body for burial, and buried it himself, having employed someone to dig the grave. He was buried in Salem Cemetery and there stands at this day an old monument bearing the following inscription:

"In memory of Elder James McCoy who died of cholera, July 12, 1833.
Jehovah smiling looks from Heaven high
And Calls to mansions far beyond the sky,
Mysterious love commands away my breath,
Entombs my dust in peace, and sweeten death,
Such love shall also guard my sleeping dust
(Most blessed thought) till God shall wake the just,
Celestial grace that brought me safe thus far,
Convey me home to dwell where angles are
O blest abode where all the saints do rest,
Ye nations seek and be forever blest"

And ----- with the Blue River Baptist Church the first Baptist Church in Washington Co., Ind., and in 1817 he was licensed to preach and in 1819 was regularly ordained as a Baptist Minister, and called to preach at the Blue River Baptist Church, and subsequently to the Hebron and the Salem Baptist Church, and was pastor of the Salem Baptist Church at the time of his death in 1833.

"In memory of Nancy McCoy, consort of Elder James McCoy, who died of cholera, July 8, 1833 aged 49 years"

Come welcome death, the end of fear
I am prepared to die,
And whilst my moldering clay lies here
My soul ascends on high"

The cholera epidemic referred to was one of the most memorable distressing events in the history of Salem. The town was then a mere village, located apparently in one of the most healthy regions in Indiana, a high, dry limestone section. Yet when this plague came it swept with "the besom of destruction." Fifty-five lives from June 25th to July 15th. One writer says, "July 4th presented a scene that baffles description. During the night of the 3rd and the morning of the 4th the grim monster had cut down eleven. The town was almost depopulated; but few were left to look after the sick and dead. The merchants closed their stores and left, and turning keys over to those who intended to remain, telling them to take such things as might be needed. The coffins were hurriedly made at a cabinet shop usually of rough poplar boards, and placed in the outside where the man who drove the dead cart could get them. After the bodies were placed in them, they were taken to the cemetery and buried by the sexton."

John McCoy

John McCoy was born Feb. 11, 1682, Fayette Co., Penn. He came with his father to Ky. In 1789, married Jane (called Jincy) Collins, October 13, 1803, died September 3rd, 1834 (1859) in Clark Co., Ind. And was buried in Silver Creek Cemetery. On his monument are the words, which he requested, - "A sinner saved by grace". He was a farmer and came to Indiana territory from Kentucky in 1804.

In 1806 he settled on land of his own on the Muddy Fork of Silver Creek, where now is located Speeds Great Cement Mills. In 1810 he removed to the east side of Silver Creek, about one half miles south east, where Muddy Fork empties into Silver Creek, and where afterwards his eldest son Lewis, for many years lived, having purchased from him the 130 acres constituting the farm in 1840, and lived on it until August 1783. John McCoy built a fine brick house for that day on the spot of ground where Rev. Wm. McCoy had erected his cabin, by the noted spring one-half mile north of the residence of Lewis McCoy and where Collins McCoy his second son, for many years lived and died. He was a chairman of the building committee, which erected the old brick church in 1823 and 1824, near the old Silver Creek Cemetery. He joined the old Silver Creek in October 1824, and was baptized by Rev. Absalom Littell. Both he and his wife are buried in the old Silver Creek Cemetery.

W.N. Wyatt, D.D., Paid the following tribute to his memory in an historical paper read at the Commencement Exercises of Franklin College, Indiana, June 4th, 1884.

John McCoy

"McCoy is a royal name to this assembly, and one that suggests nothing but good as respect to the Baptist denomination in Indiana. We traced it back a little more than a century, to the birth of John, which occurred near Uniontown, PA, February 10, 1782. While he was a small boy his father, the Rev. Wm. McCoy, immigrated to Kentucky, in which state John grew to manhood and was married. His father, being led of the Spirit to preach in Southern Indiana, made many and hazardous journeys in crossing the Ohio River and penetrating the forest of Clark County. A bold, brave man, he proclaimed the Gospel beneath the great trees to the sparse settlers, with his gun at his side. The Silver Creek Church and the association of the same name were formed in the locality of this preaching and he became pastor of the church and served it until his death (1813). His spirit was inherited by his children, three of who were Baptist ministers in this state, including the justly famed Isaac McCoy, missionary to the Indiana. A fourth, the subject of this sketch was called to minister in carnal things; and his life seem to have been as productive of great results as that of either of his brothers, excepting, perhaps, that of Isaac. In 1804 he settled in Clark Co. where he bought a large tract of forest, felled it, and wrought the ground beneath it into a farm. In 1824 he united with the Silver Creek Baptist Church, near which he lived, and was a zealous promoter of all the causes he know to advance. Being ahead of his time him with a few other, was compelled to give a good fight; and he fell, but fell to conquer. In the same year of his expulsion from the Silver Creek Church, for the sin of believing in Sunday school in Christianity and culture, he aided in establishing Franklin College. He was a member of its board for most of the time from its beginning to the day of his death, say, twenty-five years; and constantly and cheerfully did he travel the new roads, by buggy or on horseback, a distance of one hundred miles or more, to Franklin or Indianapolis, to attend the board meetings. His heart was with the College, and to the end of his days he prayed for it and gave to it.

In person he was tall, slender and comely, kindly in countenance and flexible in action - just the man to love those who excluded him, for their soul's sake, and to hew them down for their heresy. Learning to worship in God's first temples, he naturally became a Saul in Spiritual stature, in sympathy with the tall trees that waved their salute to him in the morning sun. He was happy in God's gift of a family of ten, all of who reached maturity and became members of the Baptist Church; one, Eliza, a missionary to the Indiana for nine years, and another, whom we fondly call "Uncle Bill" is with us to this day, pioneering the glad tidings with his faithful feet and trusted horse over the mountains of Southern Indiana.
Deacon McCoy served his country in the war of 1812, with the rank of major. He learned the uses of loyalty, and brought his disciplined soul into the church, there to stand for the right against every form of antichrist, to swerve, no never. He was of Scotch Irish descent, immediate; with his Scotch he understood with his Irish he outwitted the enemies of truth, and dying left his unfinished formidable fort, with a valorous posterity to help hold it, facint the fast decaying ranks of the foe. He died in 1859, aged 77 years."

John McCoy was a name of sterling integrity, strong convictions and established principles, and when convinced he was right, he would suffer martyrdom rather than yield a principle. In 1829 there was a division in the old Silver Creek Baptist Church. A majority of its members accepted the tenets taught by Alexander Campbell; John McCoy was of the minority, holding rigidly to the Baptist theological principles. Some of the majority party publicly sought to induce him to accept the Campbell doctrine, but he manfully declined to accept principles which he thought the Bible did not teach, and in his public reply said, "No, no, brother, sooner than accept what I think the lord does not teach, I would suffer my right arm to be cut off" The two parties, majority and minority, continued to hold meeting in the same house, but on separate dates, each announcing that it was the "Silver Creek Church". In 1834 there arose in the first minority church party, a discussion on the subject of missions, temperance and Sunday Schools. John McCoy, who was deacon in the church, was very zealous and outspoken for the cause of missions, temperance and Sunday Schools, and contributed to their interest in work, work and means, notwithstanding there has been a pronounced action of the church against them, to the effect that its members should not support them. For this, the church preferred charges against him, and as recorded, "for the offense" "Agreed to {simply "admonish Him, - and Elder Wilson elected to give the admonition, the Elder, in his admonition, remarked that " Mission Societies, Tract Societies, Sunday Schools and Temperance Societies were of the devil, and his works, and would come to naught", to which Deacon McCoy replied in no mild tone, "Sir, do you say that these Societies are of the devil, of his work and will come to naught" , "I tell you Nay; but through the blessing of God, the influence of them for good will extend to the ends of the earth. Sir, you might as well expect to turn the waters of the Ohio River upward, but standing on the bank and throwing straw by straw into the current, as to expect to stop the good influence of Sunday Schools and Missionary Societies." The above speech resulted in the prompt expulsion of Deacon McCoy and the Mission, Temperance and Sunday School cause survived, while that Church and others like it perished

Jane Collins, the wife of John McCoy was born in Kentucky March 30, 1778 and died in Clarke County, Ind. Sept. 1, 1835. She was the daughter of William E. Collins the heroic survivor of the noted Pigeon Roost Massacre of September 3, 1812, of which a brief sketch will hereafter be give. In all the struggles of the early pioneers, in rearing a large family, consisting of six sons and four daughters, and building up a Christian home in the wilderness of southern Indiana Territory against the depredations of the Indians in which her family suffered the extreme savage cruelties of the Pigeon Roost Massacre, and against the machinations of Satan in aiding her husband and others, establishing a church of pure and undefiled religion, she bore her part most heroically and before her death saw all of her children, save one, grown and leading honorable useful lives. One a little girl, Mahala, died at the age of eleven.

Issac McCoy

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Isaac McCoy was born in Fayette Co. Pa, June 13, 1784. He came with his father from Pennsylvania to Kentucky in 1789. In 1801 he became an earnest Christian and joined the Buck Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky. On October 6, 1803, he married Miss Christiana Polk, daughter of Mr. Charles Polk, of Shelby Co., Kentucky whose wife and three children were captured by the Ottawa Indians in 1782, near Louisville, KY, and account of which will be given hereafter. In 1805 he moved to Clarke Co. Ind. And settled near the Silver Creek Baptist Church and on invitation of that Church he accepted a license to preach, which was conferred on him July 11, 1807. He preached with great zeal in that entire region for about one year. Having his heart set on missionary labors, he was induced from the great destitution in the region about Vicennes, Indiana to move there in the fall of 1808. On the 13th of October, 1801, he was solemnly ordained to the work of ministry and became the first pastor of the Maria Baptist Church, located eight miles northeast of Vicennes. During the ten years he resided at Vincennes and was pastor of the Maria Baptist Church, he traveled and preached extensively in Indiana and Illinois, and was instrumental in gathering many into the fold of Christ, and in planting churches in many parts of that frontier region. In time he became the most noted missionary among the American Indians. Before the days of comfortable stage coaches or railroads, he made many trips on horseback to Washington City from the West, necessarily, camping on the way, in the dense wilderness often with the Indians, and swimming dangerous streams in mid winter or heated summer, as occasion required, to communicate to Congress facts and plans concerning the civilization, moral and religious education of the Indians and their final removal and settlement west of the Mississippi.

So much has been written by and of him that only a few quotations is thought necessary here. One of his biographers writes " He was the great apostle to the American Indians; and what Judson was to Burman, Isaac McCoy was to the American Indians. Rev. Walter N. Wyeth, D.D. Of Philadelphia, Pa., one of his biographers begins a memorial as follows:

"Early in the present century (19th) there appeared in the Wabash Valley, a remarkable man, destined to be famous among the aborigines, and to be recognized by the Government of the United States, while acting as factor in the Baptist Denomination, of which he was a conspicuous member. It was Isaac McCoy. His father being in the period of drift, toward newer settlements westward, removed his family to Kentucky, where many came from Virginia and the East. The lad was then but six or seven years of age. He very soon developed a fondness for books, and an aversion to evil and all the means conducing to it. The first impressions concerning sin and salvation were produced by remostrances and tender counsel from his mother. His mental and normal elevation above the youth of his acquaintance gave him distinction among them, and he had no ties among sinners that made it difficult for him to become a Christian. Yet Satan was determined not to let him go, as shown in the several weeks of suffering and striving to be released from his bondage, and to come into the liberty of the Gospel, which he experienced. His conversion occurred in his seventeenth year, in 1801. The experience attending his call to the ministry was among the peculiar circumstances that have characterized the "call" in all periods, but not in every case. With this irresistible voice there came an unmistakable finger point to a certain field; no human being suggesting it and everybody indifferent except his parents, who looked upon his choice of place with distrust. In his autobiography he says; "I not only felt an impression to preach, but I felt strong impressions to publish salvation to the inhabitants of Vincennes. I could not account for these impressions, as I was an entire stranger to the place, and knew but little of it by information, and the accomplishment of such a thing seemed impracticable."

Strange phenomenon, not unlike that in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, occurred to him a dark, misty day, as he was at work in the woods. A bright light shone about him as if emanating from an object in the west; supposing it to be due to a sudden appearance in the sun, he turned quickly to take the time of day, but it had vanished. His duty to Vicennes, which lay westward, being constantly in mind, he interpreted the sign as signifying the will of God. He went aside again to pray and, thereafter, had no doubt whatever as to his duty. So carefully did he cherish his impressions that, when making an engagement of marriage, - "insettling the match he told her that he must move directly to Vincennes."

Soon after his marriage, he moved to Vicennes and not finding an opening for preaching, he subsequently settled eight miles northeast of Mariah Creek (Now Park County, Ind.) and began working at the trade of wheel-making, which he had learned from his father, and which was quite profitable in the early periods of the country, especially the manufacture of spinning wheels. In 1809 Maria Creek Baptist Church was organized, and he became its pastor. That Church is still in existence and is known far and wide as a prominent country church. His Biographer continues: "In this his first and only pastorate, he continued for about eight years, uniting with its duties frequent and long missionary tour, "from Kentucky on the east to Missouri on the west, and to the extreme limit of immigration on the north".

"As pastor of Maria Creek Church he revealed and developed those traits of character that are fundamental to a pioneer and missionary. Indians were numerous in the land and, as the white settlers were becoming more numerous in a great ration, there naturally developed in the suspicious minds of the red men a jealousy and fear of their white neighbors that nothing could effectually suppress. War came on the War of 1812 and the Indians were very uncertain as allies and dreadfully dangerous as foes. There was no protection from their savagery except in armed defense, and to this there was universal resort. Public worship was held amidst arms and sentry, and the block-house was often the temporary abode of families, Mr. McCoy's having been one of them.

In common with others of his time, Mr. McCoy not only learned the modes of defense, but also cultivated courage and adaptation to circumstances, thus qualifying himself for the career before him. Mr. Joseph Chambers, a member of the church, and an intimate friend during his pastorate, writes of him:
"Mr. McCoy had all the elements of a soldier and there were circumstances in his history that were well fitted to develop them. He was reared in Kentucky, in most troublous times, when the utmost vigilance and energy were required for personal defense and preservation. During the early part of War of 1812 we all lived together at a fort in this place, when I had abundant opportunities of seeing that he was not afraid of the face of man…..With his rifle he used to lead us on in pursuit of the Indians, and took it with him also to the house of God, never knowing but that the service would be interrupted by a hostile attack. For two or three years it was customary for those who attended public worship to carry their arms with them,"

Thus in those days minister and people stood guard almost constantly in field and church. And thus this faithful minister often went to church with his Bible under his arm and his gun on his shoulder. It was while he was thus armed with the gospel of peace and of war, there arose in his heart a great anxiety to preach the gospel to the Indians. His Biographer continues; " He came to believe that the spirit of war was at variance with the spirit of religion. The problem of their evangelization must have been ever before him, for his mind ripened into a purpose and a plan that resulted in a long personal service to them, and signalized the opening of an era of Baptist missions in this country. Chambers

As a part of his preparation for the great work of his life he learned to "endure hardness" while a minister at Maria Creek. "The church was very small and poor, and he was obliged to labor a large part of the time with his own hands for the support of his family. Besides acting as our sentinel, he mended our farming implements for us, which he was very able to do, as he had early learned the trade of a wheelwright."" -- Chambers

In October 1817, as Corresponding Secretary of the Wabash District Association, he aroused a sentiment among the Churches for civilization of the North American Indians, by a circular letter of such thrilling import, that permanent missions to that end were established, and he was chosen to be a missionary. His Biographer continues:

"Thus the time came when the great work of his life was to be commenced. He was fully prepared for it, so far as the means of preparation were at hand. The way was obscure. No organized effort had been made for the Indians in the West - no society formed, no individual hearts turned toward the Red Man in any known plans for saving their souls, except that the American Board of Commissioners had just begun efforts to the Cherokees east of the Mississippi. He was the pioneer among the Baptists, and began without the lamp of experience, yet with as determined of himself and all he possessed to the object as ever characterized a Christian man. His good wife was in full accord and, thenceforth they had no interest apart from the interest of the neglected Indians. The sympathy he obtained from Maria Creek Church was mostly personal rather than missionary. Mr. Chambers, always recognized as first in counsel and in support, says: "Well do I remember going, by request, to this house to join him in prayer just before his removal to the Indian country. A few years before, we had both been defending ourselves and our families, with our rifles, against the invasion of the Indians, and now he was going to plant himself down among them, with his wife and seven small children, in the hope of becoming the instrument of their salvation. I will not dissemble that, in the weakness of my faith, I feared that he had fallen upon a Utopian scheme."

Many difficulties confronted him. At times he wavered as to the utility of the great work under the conditions. He was hampered as to time and space in his appointment. Friends and foes, more or less, opposed.

Then he resolved, the Lord willing he would employ the remainder of his life and labors in the promotion of the temporal and eternal welfare of the Indians. From this time forward, for twenty eight years, his history was "marked with a degree of self-denial, excessive labor, suffering and privation of personal domestic comforts, that should give him a place among the most distinguished Christian philanthropists of any age of the world."

In October 1818, with his family, wife and seven children, he moved beyond all the while settlements into the dense forest ninety miles and established a mission school for Indian children. A double log cabin was erected and a school opened, and here the great missionary began his labors of preaching and teaching among the Indians. This mission was planted on Raccoon Creek in the present locality of Montezuma Park County, Indiana. At his mission he came into immediate contact with the Wea, Miami, and Kickapoo tribes and for two years and half, under the most adverse circumstances, faithfully labored, maintaining a school with hired teacher, himself mingling with and studying the language of the tribes; and, at times making long and dangerous tours into the very heart of the Indian Country, visiting many tribes and seeking the best way and means to accomplish the purpose of his high calling.

In 1820 he established a successful mission at Fort Wayne. In 1822 he established another near the present site of Niles, Michigan, which he called "Carey", and another, among the Ottawa's, the present site of the City of Grand Rapids, Mich., which he named "Thomas". It was this tribe of Ottawa's, that thirty eight years before captured his wife's mother and two of her children, older brother of Mrs. Christina McCoy, near Louisville, Ky., and kept them in captivity some eighteen months or more, further account of which will be given hereafter.

Many conversions occurred at the Carey Missions. The hymns composed by Isaac McCoy on the occasion of the first baptism at Fort Wayne and at Carey are expressive at once of his great joy and his great hope of what would yet be done for the Indian. He records that the greatest obstacle that he was obliged to meet in his labors for the conversion of the Indians was the introduction of whisky among them by white men. So great were his annoyances at one time that he decided to send several of his Indian pupils East to be educated, so that they might become teachers for their own people. They found a ready welcome at Hamilton, N.Y. His labors at Washington were to secure a territory for the Indians into which the white man might not intrude his wicked commerce. This, he regarded as the only sure hope for the christianization of civilization of the red man. He lived to see some of the tribes settled on their own territory, industrious and happy. In his labors for the passage of such acts as he recommended to congress, he speaks of the sympathy and cooperation afforded him by Spencer H. Cone, William Colgate, and others of his brethren. On October 9, 1825, Mr. McCoy preached the first sermon in English ever delivered in Chicago or near its site. In 1826 he gave up the personal superintendence of the Carey mission for the purpose of selecting lands for the Indians further west. He made surveys west of the Mississippi River, and several times went to Washington to convey to Congress, and to lay his plans before that body. In 1840 he published his "History of Indian Affairs", a volume of 600 octavo pages, full of interest. In 1842 the American Indian Mission Association was formed, and he was made Secretary, with headquarters at Louisville, Kentucky.

In June 1846 as he was returning from Jeffersonville, where he preached, he was caught in a rainstorm, form the effects of which he died in a few days at his home in Louisville,

His life and labors were truly the connecting link between the barbarism and civilization in this region of the country and over a large portion of the West. His perseverance and devotion were morally and heroically sublime. For nearly thirty years he was the Apostle to the Indians of the West. His last words were, "Tell the brethren never to let the Indians Mission decline." (Baptist Encyclopedia)

Rev. Isaac McCoy had much to do with the removal of the Indians from the east to the west side of the Mississippi River. Believing that a territory in the west, far beyond the habitation of white men, set apart and secured to them by the U.S. Government as their final home, might result largely in their Christian civilization, through missionary effort, he made many arduous visits to the Capital and, through his strenuous efforts, more than to those of any other man, the Government appointed him to lead repeated delegations of Indians and engineers to investigate that region of territory which was afterwards surveyed by him and assistants and, by authority of Government, through treaties with the Indians, became the well known Indian Territory. To this region in the year 1830 he, with the Indians, whose missionary he was, removed and he began his labors again there, having located at what was afterwards Wesport, Mo., now Kansas City. (Baptist Encyclopedia)

As to the results of Isaac McCoy's labors among the Indians after three quarters of a century, I quote the following excerpt from an article in the Dallas News of Dallas, Texas, of date May 12th, 1912 by the "Special Staff of the New" "Oklahoma City, Okla. May 11, 1912".

"When the members of the Osage and Pawnee Indian tribes pitch their tents on vacant lots in Oklahoma City, preparatory to attending sessions of the Southern Baptist Convention (to convene in a few days), the spirit of Isaac McCoy, a Kentuckian, will be made glad in the realization that the work he began nearly a century ago is still bearing fruit. McCoy was the first Baptist Missionary to the Indians west of the Mississippi. His name has almost been forgotten outside of the historical circles of the church with which he was affiliated. The Home Missionary Society of the Southern Convention, and the Missionary Organization of the State Convention could not lay claim to distinction without pausing to pay homage to the memory of Isaac McCoy, who braved terrors of a wilderness and went in quest of recruits for the Christian's standard among worshippers of wooden gods and the noon… As one of the pioneers carrying the gospel to the Indian, Isaac McCoy spent fifteen years in the ministry among tribes of North Indiana, and Southern Michigan; and when the new country, as Indian Territory was named, became an entity, McCoy received a commission from the Philadelphia, Board of Baptist Missions, for frontier service there. In June 1832 he arrived on the east bank of the Kaw, near where Kansas City now lies, and built a hut which his family called home for the next ten years.

Indian Territory was an area of waving grass and a hunter's paradise. McCoy, with lesions of scriptural beauty in mind, jogged along on his pony for 200 miles through the wilderness, beset with dangers, arriving two months later at a point three miles north of the Arkansas fifteen miles west of the present site of Fort Gibson. There he organized a Baptist Church, the first in the Territory, the membership of which consisted of himself, his wife, a half breed Creek Indian and three Negro slaves. The drag net was not great. But its nucleus is responsible for the more than 60,000 members of that church in Oklahoma today.

For ten years, Isaac McCoy continued his work, other missionaries coming in, the meantime, allowed him to give some attention to local government affairs. Until 1842 McCoy made several pilgrimages to Washington to attend the sessions of Congress in behalf of the Indians and to attend the triennial convention, that being prior to the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention. The trips were made from and to Indian Territory on horseback, requiring several months to complete them. He was a personal friend of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, and President Madison; and in addition to his ministerial work, represented the Government in making of treaties and marking the boundaries between the Nations at the later day resident found them.

In 1842 McCoy left the field, assisting in the organization of the North American Indian Baptist Association, which took for its object Indian missionary work. He was the first secretary, and, as his duties kept him entirely at Louisville, the headquarters, the pioneer home on the banks of the Kaw was deserted by the family moving to Kentucky. McCoy died in 1846, and his body sleeps in the Western Cemetery at Louisville, His last work were, "Tell the brethren at the front never to give up on the Indian Missions." The association went out of existence shortly after by being merged with the Southern Convention as now organized."