My Genealogy Hound

Jerome Causin Berryman, one of the oldest South Methodist Ministers of Missouri, was born in Nelson County, Ky., February 22, 1810. He was educated in the old log schoolhouse and, at the age of nineteen, having been converted to the Methodist faith there joined the conference on trial. At the end of five years he was appointed to the Indian mission work in the Indian Territory, now Leavenworth, Kas., spending fourteen years in that work. The last four years he had charge of all the mission work extending from the Missouri River on the North to the Red River on the South. In the fall of 1847 he was recalled to the regular work in Missouri, and established a boarding school for both sexes at Arcadia, (now) Iron County, Mo., which he conducted for sixteen years. The school was known as the Arcadia High School, and had an average yearly matriculation of 150. Having severed his connection with that school he labored as an itinerant minister till 1884. Notwithstanding his limited early opportunities he acquired a good education. In 1831 he married Sarah Cessna, a native of Kentucky, who bore him six children, four of whom are living. She died in the Indian Territory. For his second wife he married Mrs. M. M. Wells, nee Watts, who had a daughter by her first husband. His second wife died in 1869, and he then married Mrs. M. E. Truehart, nee Dufuy. Father Berryman, though seventy-eight years old, has a strong and clear voice, and his intellect is but little impaired.