William Gannaway Brownlow - Early Life

Early Life

Brownlow was born in Wythe County, Virginia in 1805, the eldest son of Joseph Brownlow and Catherine Gannaway. Joseph Brownlow, an itinerant farmer, died in 1816, and Catherine Gannaway followed three months later, leaving William orphaned at the age of 10. Brownlow and his four siblings were split up among relatives, with Brownlow spending the remainder of his childhood on his uncle John Gannaway's farm. At age 18, Brownlow went to Abingdon where he learned the trade of carpentry from another uncle, George Winniford.

In 1825, Brownlow attended a camp meeting near Sulphur Springs, Virginia, where he experienced a dramatic spiritual rebirth. He later recalled that, suddenly, "all my anxieties were at an end, all my hopes were realized, my happiness was complete." He immediately abandoned the carpentry trade and began studying to become a Methodist minister. In Fall 1826, he attended the annual meeting of the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in Abingdon. He applied to join the travelling ministry (commonly called "circuit riders"), and was admitted that year by Bishop Joshua Soule.

In 1826, Soule gave Brownlow his first assignment— the Black Mountain circuit in North Carolina. It was here that Brownlow first ran afoul of the Baptists— who were spreading quickly throughout the Southern Appalachian region— and developed an immediate dislike of them, considering them narrow-minded bigots who engaged in "dirty" rituals such as foot washing. The following year, Brownlow was assigned to the circuit in Maryville, Tennessee, where there was a strong Presbyterian presence, and Brownlow later recalled being constantly harassed by a young Presbyterian missionary who taunted him with Calvinistic criticisms of Methodism.

The competition in Southern Appalachia between the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians was fierce, and diatribes against rival religions were commonplace among missionaries. Brownlow, however, took such debates to a whole new level, attacking not only Baptist and Presbyterian theology, but also the character of his rival missionaries. In 1828, he was sued for slander, but the suit was dismissed. In 1831 he was sued for libel by a Baptist preacher, and ordered to pay his accuser $5. In 1832, Brownlow was assigned to the Pickens District in South Carolina, which he claimed was "overrun with Baptists" and "nullifiers." Unable to make headway in the district, he circulated a venomous 70-page pamphlet blasting the district's Baptists, and galloped safely back into the mountains as the district's enraged residents demanded he be hanged. Brownlow's run-in with the nullifiers would later influence his views on secession.

In 1836, Brownlow married Eliza O'Brien, and the two settled down in Elizabethton. Although Brownlow left the circuit shortly thereafter, he continued his staunch defense of Methodism in later newspaper columns and books, and for the remainder of his life he was known to friend and foe alike as "Parson Brownlow."