This book offers a history of three generations of Baptist and Methodist clergymen in nineteenth-century Virginia, and through them of the congregations and communities in which they lived and worked. Unlike previous scholars, who examined Southern Protestantism as only a proslavery and pro-Confederate ideology, Schweiger takes a wider view and finds a broad transformation of the social and cultural context of religious experience in the region. She traces several major themes, such as the contrast between rural and urban experience, or the Methodist and Baptist schisms of the 1840's through the lives and careers of 800 clergy.

"Our Family Tree, as far as is known, was first planted in America by the Reverend Mr. James Clack, who came from Marden, in Wiltshire, England, to Gloucester County, Virginia, as a minister of the Established Church in the year 1678. It was his grand daughter, Sarah Clack, daughter of James Clack II, who married William Maclin III, in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1754"--Forward. Descendants and relatives lived in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Louisiana and elsewhere