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Pitcher, Rev. Oliver Perry, was born in Martinsburgh, Lewis county, N. Y.,
August 19, 1831. His father, Moses Pitcher, was a native of Westlield, Mass., and
at the age of ten came to Lewis county with his parents, Reuben and Martha (Bar-
rett) Pitcher, together with five brothers and three sisters, their only conveyance
being an ox cart; they settled in Martinsburgh in 1802, in what was then known as
the '• Black River Country." Moses Pitcher married Samantha, daughter of Moses
Chadwick, a native of Vermont, and to her Christian character and influence more
than to any other human agency, the subject of the sketch attributes his conversion, al-
though his father was a man of more than ordinary ability and tenderness of feeling.
His father met his death by accident, being drowned in Black River Bay, in Decem-
ber, 184G. The ancestral line of the Pitcher family traces back to Andrew Pitcher,
who emigrated from England and settled in Dorchester, Mass.. in 1633, covering a
period of eight generations in the lapse of 264 years; from the fact that several bap-
tisms occur along the genealogical record and that at least si.\ of the fathers bore
Scriptural names, the religious trend of the family is fairly indicated. Oliver Perry
Pitcher received a partial common school education in his native town, but after the
great change he experienced in his conversion at Lowville, in 1843, under the labors
of Rev. James Erwin, desiring to be useful and realizing his deficiency in education,
returned to the common school taught by Rev. J. F. Dayan in East Lowville, and
afterwards pursued a course of higher English in the Lowville Academy, at which
institution he spent several seasons, attending the academy in summer and teaching
in the winter, which with a little work at harness making enabled him to defray all
necessary expenses of the course. During all this time the question of what his life
work should be was not fully settled, only proposing to obey God whatever his will
might be. Soon after entering into full membership in the church the pastor put in
his hands a leader's class book and license to exhort, suggesting to his mind the
thought of the ministry. This caused great hesitancy and heart searching, fearing
he might attempt to run before he was sent, only finding relief in the persuasion
that if such a call was from God he could and would reveal it so clearly as to leave no
reasonable doubt of its reality. There the matter rested from year to year, though
not without efforts during those years to bring men to Christ. At length while asso-
ciated with his pastor in a religious service the Holy Spirit was so poured out that
at least one soul, a man of influence and standing in middle life, was gloriously con-
verted. This thrilled his heart with heavenly joy and eventuated in such an entire
consecration to God as should determine the solemn question of a Divine call to the
ministry. Henceforth business was cheerfully harmonized with Providential open-
ings so that in a few weeks being led in a way he knew not, he found himself with
a small number of other students sitting at the feet of our modern Gamaliel, the Rev.
John Dempster, D. D. , who by almost superhuman efltorts, crossing land and sea,
contending with indifference, and overcoming opposition had succeeded as the
apostle of a higher ministerial education in founding the Methodist General Biblical
Institute at Concord, N. H., the first theological school of the denomination
in llic United States, ;uul from which he was one of the live in the second
class to graduate in 1851. The Rev. J. B. Koote, D. D.. also of Martinsburjfh,
and his room mate for two years, bciun the first and only ^jraduate in 1850.
It was at the expiration of the first year's cour.se of study at this institution when
the way seemed so hedged up as to forbid a forward step, that such a combination
of circimistances intervened in the unlooked for provision for the payment of a dcl)t,
and the calls to the pastorate of two small churches successively within a few miles
of the institute as to reveal the hand of (rod pointing to his spiritual vineyard as the
scene of his future toils, especially as those two years of extra service were crowned
with the hopeful conversion of about fifty souls. At the time of his graduation he
was lying dangerously ill with typhoid fever which completely prostrated him, not-
withstanding, by the blessing of God on means used in answer to prayer, he was
raised up, his case passed the examining board, and a diploma was awarded him.
This occurred in the autumn of 1851, with body weakened, funds exhausted, doctor's
bill unpaid, far from home yet hoping to enter conference in the spring free from
debt. In this dilemma the Lord again revealed his fatherly care in sending a call
for six months preaching to a small church whose pastor's health had but just failed ;
with gratitude to God for returning health the call was accepted. During this in-
terim he invited to his assistance an accomplished and devoted lady friend who had
already consented to unite her life's labors and destiny with his, and Miss Jane M.
Danforth, daughter of Deacon Samuel Danforth of Bristol, N. H.. became his wife.
Uuder these auspices his studies and labors in New England closed with all debts
paid and a farewell given to the " Old Granite State." In pursuance of the plan of
his life service and in harmony with what seemed the ordering of a benign and over-
ruling Providence, on the '20th of June, 18.52, his name was entered upon the roll of
prol)ationers as a traveling preacher in the "Old Black River" (now Northern New
York) Conference, and stationed at Henderson. Here were spent two eventful
years, with the blessing of God on his labors, while the sorrow of a great bereave-
ment in the death of his faithful and beloved wnfe and first born son fell like a pall
on his heart and home; their remains were interred in the same grave in the old
cemetery in Lowville beside his friends. In 185-1 he labored at Carthage, 18.55-5G at
Rodman, during wdiich term {1850) he was united m marriage to Miss Sarah Putnam
Benton of Watertown, N. Y., daughter of the lamented sheriff. Wells Benton, who
died in office at Watertown, June i'.). 1857. In 1857-58 Mr. Pitcher was at Black
River; 18.59-01) Clayton; 1801 at Rome, Embargo street; in 1802 St. Johnsville. At
this period the nation was in the terrific throes of the great Civil war; all loyal
hearts were moved with patriotic zeal to crush the rebellion and save the union;
multitudes rushed to arms; husbands, fathers, brothers and sons all mingled in the
uprising host; homes, schools, churches, societies, friends and loved ones, all left
behind. How opportune at this crisis was the already organized existence of the
Young Men's Christian Association; representing as it did the various churches of
the land from whose outgrowth sprang the United States Christian Commission as a
general agency through which the great denominations could cooperate under the
auspices of the government, between the army at the front and their friends and
churches at home. In this emergency an unexpected message came to Mr. Pitcher
at St. Johnsville to come to Washington. It was from that broad-minded man of
God, Mitchel II. Miller, president of the Y. M. C. A. of the city, calling himself and
wife to officiate as missionaries of the association in that many sided and most inter-
esting field of array work in and around the National Capital. As this call seemed
so manifestly from God and harmonized so completely with their cherished desires
to minister to our brave defenders, that the message was gladly accepted (after com-
municating with the proper conference authorities and obtaining the con.sent of his
official board) and the work entered upon November 10, 1862, and continued un-
til the close of the war in 1865, with the cessation of only one month on account of
inllammatory rheumatism. Finally, after an absence of about five and one-half
years, three of war time and two and one half following, in missionary and Bible
work in Washington, D. C, on the 9th of April, 1868, he bade adieu to the capital
and its people and with his wife and infant son, John Benton, now a graduate of the
class of 1895, Syracuse University, and just finishing his three years' course of study
in Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J., returned to his native State to re-
sume regular itinerant labor in the old Black River Conference. So after serving
the church in this capacity twelve additional years, viz., three years at Champion;
three at Port Leyden: three at Cape Vincent; and three at Mannsville, and witness-
ing the discharge of a §500 parsonage debt, the building of two new parsonages with
cost paid and provided for, and the ground purchased and foundation laid for one
new church and above all the experience of a comforting hope that many souls, as
sheaves from these several later harvest fields shall be finally gathered; together
with a much larger number from other and more distant fields, with all the blood-
washed of the church with whom they have toiled and taken sweet counsel into the
common garner of the great husbandman above. Being then partially disabled he
was constrained by his own convictions to ask at the conference of 1880 a supernum-
erary relation, in which he was continued until 1888, when he was made superannu-
ated and has remained in that relation to the present (1898), residing at the old home
in Adams, N. Y.
