REMINISCENCES.

Possible first printing (no direct statement provided). 154 pages. Hardcover: H 18.75cm x L 12.75cm. Beige cloth; boards soiled and stained; front board's gilt stamping dulled but legible; spine toned with gilt still fairly bright but with frayed 1.5cm horizontal tear and ding towards heel; rear board has short ding at its upper right (book also encountered in blue cloth binding but it is unknown which has priority). Toning to edges; several leaves has slight dings at their top margins; some foxing and soiling to endpapers; original owner's two-line ink name/town stamp "J.S. Oakley, | Chester, Miss." at front free endpaper center; some foxing to interior pages which, overall, remain clean. B/w frontispiece portrait of author with toned/foxed tissue guard sheet; approximately nine other b/w plates on unpaged leaves. Binding is firm. A good+ copy. Uncommon autobiography of Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri circuit riding Methodist minister Robert A. Young (1824-1902) who served as President of Florence Wesleyan University (now University of North Alabama) during the Civil War and was a founding trustee of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Born in Sheffield, England and licensed to preach in the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1870, Joseph Sykes Oakley (1852-1901) emigrated to the U.S. in 1872 and was accepted on a trial basis to the North Mississippi Conference in November of that same year with full admission in November 1874. Oakley accepted assignments at twelve different posts across central and north Mississippi from the 1870s into the late 1890s from Greenville in the state's western Delta region to Starkville and Columbus in the east and Water Valley and Holly Springs in the north until, due to failing health, settling in Winona in 1900 where he passed away in 1901. Oakley served as Secretary of the North Mississippi Conference from 1890 to 1898 and was twice elected a delegate to the General Conference. OCLC locates copies at eighteen member institutions.…