Itinerancy: A Paradigm of the Frontier  
Itinerancy has been a functional component of Methodism from the very beginning of this 
missionary movement.  It is the vehicle through which the connectional polity of Methodism has been 
dutifully maintained.  As Methodism in America grew beyond a movement and into a denomination, 
Itinerancy became an institutional form of discipline for the clergy and commitment for the 
congregations.  As a connectional system, the congregations were established as every church being 
in connection with every other church within the boundary of an Annual Conference. The clergy, who 
voluntarily entered the ranks of Itinerancy, were to submit to the mission of the Church when and 
where-ever he was sent by the Bishop.  It was this system which structured the spread of Methodism 
across the frontier thus making the Methodists the largest Protestant denomination in America by 
1840. 

 Dr. J.D. Lynn suggests that Americans added to the Wesleyan notion of ministry the criteria 
that a willingness to travel denoted an authentic call to preach. (E.Dale Dunlap, “ The United 
Methodist System of Itinerant Ministry”, Perspectives on American Methodism. Eds, Russell E. 
Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, Jean Miller Schmidt, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993, p. 418.)  In 
addition to the practical aspect of the mobility of clergy in an ever expanding nation, the Itinerancy was 
understood to be the best system for the vitality of the local church.  John Wesley once wrote in a 
letter: “I know, were I myself to preach one whole year in one place, I should preach both myself and 
most of my congregation asleep.  Nor can I believe it was ever the will of our Lord that any 
congregation should have one teacher only.(Dunlap, p. 418).   Interestingly, the greatest problem to the system of Itinerancy was that of marriage.  Francis Asbury, father of American Methodism was a strong advocate of celibacy among the itinerant pastors.  Upon receiving  notice of the marriage of a favored preacher, Asbury responded:“Ibelieve the devil and women will get all my preachers.”(Dunlap, p 423).  

In 1844 the General Conference addressed this  problem: 

 “The admission of married men into the Itinerancy (has) had a debilitating influence upon the energies of the itinerant system.  It is not easy to calculate the extent of the influence of this practice to enervate the operations of the itinerant ministry...The circuits which would have received and sustained them with cordiality as single men, in consideration of their youth and want of experience,have very different views and feeling when they are sent to them with the encumbrance of a family... 
It is to be feared that these men have either mistaken their calling in the beginning, or by early temptation lost the spirit and power of it.” (Dunlap, p 424). 
 
 This context surrounding the marriage of Methodist ministers in the 19th century  sheds light 
on the fervor with which Eaton writes in defense of the itinerant’s wife.  He writes not only to 
establish the nature of her duties but more importantly to defend the essential nature of her role in the  
success of the itinerant’s ministry, which links her in a unique way to the success of the mission of 
Methodism.  He also crafts his argument in such a way as to signal that the only type of woman who 
can meet the qualifications is the one who will whole-heartedly and without reservation embrace the 
Itinerancy as her own life.  Thus, the woman willing to travel is the woman worth marrying. It is the 
ideology of domesticity which helps Eaton to appeal with sentimentality to the value of a wife.  Upon 
reading The Itinerants Wife it is easy to wonder how a Methodist clergy could ever make it without 
a wife and at the same time how he would  ever find a woman so saintly.  Thus, in the world of 19th 
century American Methodism not only were the private and public spheres blurring in the work of the 
clergy and the role of  his wife; the very institution of marriage was held in fragile tension with the 
institution of Itinerancy. The paradigm of Itinerancy dictated that Itinerant wives be steeped in the 
paradigm of domesticity.