CHAPTER IV / HISTORY OF SEAFORD

A Record of the Progress of Christianity in Seaford:
Most of the early settlers of Seaford were friends, if not members, of the Methodist Protestant Church. As the records show there were no other church organization there until about thirty years had passed. Seaford citizens were earnest and enthusiastic in their religious devotions, uniform and constant in their religious life. They were socially religious, would exhort, pray, sing and shout in the church and talk religion in there homes with children and neighbors, and there were but few of those families in which the voices of praise and prayer were not heard morning and evening. They had comparatively little preaching by their pastors but kept the church open and kept up its services.
I can now remember the thrilling pathos and power that the exhortations and prayers of Henry Little, Levin Cannon, William Hazzard, Jacob Hazzard and Rhoads Hazzard voiced. They has their revival meetings and gathered into the church the unconverted of their own families and others.
The Sabbath Day School began as early as I can remember, they had question books and libraries where biographies of good men and women.
Church Circuits were large, making a preachers visit once every four weeks. An example is the Dorchester circuit, they gave to Salem and Vienna one Sabbath, Tuesday and Wednesday to Hurley's Neck and Griffith's Neck. Thursday they were at McKendree and next Sabbath were in the East New Market area. The next week took up old Bethesda, Friendship and Federalsburg, next came the Fork District and then Bethel and Seaford area which has fifteen stations to call upon.
Then there were the Camp Meetings, places of great religious gatherings. These meetings lasted but four days, beginning on Friday evening and closing on Wednesday,
services were held morning until midnight or after. Many were converted and the churches were revived and encouraged
One must mention the old Ennal's Camp Ground, for it was the center of the Dorchester circuit, a very notable and popular place for a meeting. The tents numbered in the hundreds and horse wagons filled the adjoining grounds as hundred of people gathered there.
There was a camp meeting held every year somewhere near Seaford. Locations were Mrs. Rust woods, Chapel Branch, Little's woods near Wesley Church. Ross's woods became very popular with the Seaford M. P. Church congregation.
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