Father Cornwall born born in Franklin county, Ga., February 18, 1798. He died at his residence, near San Buena Ventura, Cal., January 2, 1879, in the eighty-first year of his age. His father moved to Hopkins county, Ky., in 1803, and thence to Washington county, Mo., in 1816. He professed religion in 1822 under the preaching of Robert D. Morrow and F. M. Braly. Joined the McGee Presbytery in 1824; was licensed to preach in 1825, and ordained by the Arkansas Presbytery in 1826. He went to Arkansas, near Batesville, in 1827, where he married Miss Nancy, the eldest daughter of Col. Joseph Hardin, of Davidsonville. Here father Cornwall spent nearly twenty years in ministerial labor, the results of which may be seen to this day in that country. In 1846 he emigrated to Oregon, and spent nearly twenty years there in planting our churches. In 1865 he moved to California, and closed up his career in the toils of life just after the ushering in of the present year.

He and his aged wife, who still lives, raised nine children, five sons and four daughters. One of these sons, J. H. Cornwall, is pastor of our congregation in Eugene City, Oregon. Father Cornwall had been closely confined for some two months before his death. His sufferings were severe, but his faith in God never faltered to the last. Brother Bushnell has the date of his immigration to Oregon wrong by ten years. The writer first met father Cornwall at the Cane Hill camp-ground, Arkansas, in the fall of 1845. He was then on his way to Central, Mo., for the purpose of starting acress the plains in the spring of 1846. At the meeting he preached us his farewell sermon. Dr. B. H. Pierson, Andrew and John Buchanan, Samuel and James Harris, and W. T. Larimore were in attendance. I think no one at that meeting ever saw father Cornwall afterward, except myself.

As brother Bushnell has furnished a sketch, and the writer is notified that a biography in pamphlet form may be expected, I do not think it necessary to say more than a few reflections, which may stimulate some young brother in the ministry.

1. Father Cornwall was an educated minister. He was never what we call a settled pastor. He was circuit rider and supply. He was a student in the proper sense of the term. As brother Bushnell says, he had collected a large and well selected library, and had mastered its contents. A large part of that library he brought with him across the plains, and he wintered in the southern part of Oregon, living nine months with his family on meat alone to save his books. To an ordinary schooling he added by self culture until he well deserved to be called an educated man. His perception of truth was quick, his mental grasp like that of a giant; his analysis and arrangement almost remarkable; his language chaste and universally correct, words few and well chosen.

2. Father Cornwall was an able and sound theologian. I do not consider the fact that he became such by study and privation through a course of years on the circuit and at home, as an argument against theological schools. With their aid our young men ought to become such in a comparatively short time. But father Cornwall, as all his contemporaries in our Church, had to take the course they did nor not preach at all, and it can be said in honor of him and many others that they labored and toiled amid the obstacles of life, and attained such an eminence in a knowledge of the doctrines of the Bible, as ought to put many of our modern D.D.'s to the blush.

3. He loved the Church of his choice. This may be seen in his whole ministerial life. He never at any period of his life, so far as I know, received a salary for preaching. He believed the working minister ought to be supported, but he spent much of his time in the good work at home and abroad, receiving only such free-will offerings as were made. He was a thorough Cumberland Presbyterian; loved her medium doctrines, and especially her revival spirit. Any indication that this was dying out in the Church brought him pain and anguish. This Church was in the twelfth year of its organization when he joined it; only a few ministers and not many members. He preached in it fifty-three years, looking over it and going round about it. What must have been his feeling when near his departure! See her ministerial and numerical strength, her seats of literature and theology, her Synods and Presbyteries, her strongholds and outposts. How this view must have moved his soul in adoration and thanksgiving. It made him content to die.
WALLA WALLA, W.T.
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, March 6, 1879, page 1]

[Source: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 1879, page 15 & 82]