This collection documents the administrative activities handled at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS). It consists of the following – Series 1: Meeting minutes and statistical reports (1847-1913), Series 2: Administrative and committee records (1843-1919), Series 3: Examination of character records (1847-1922).

“Series 1: Meeting minutes and statistical reports” consists of manuscript volumes, which commonly include the following information: Louisiana Conference MECS detailed answers to a series of administrative questions appearing in the denomination’s Doctrines and Discipline, appointments for each pastoral charge (one or more churches assigned to a preacher), committee rosters and reports, and resolutions. The statistical reports often provide numerical details about each pastoral charge’s membership, baptisms, church property, finances, youth work, and Sunday Schools.

“Series 2: Administrative and committee records” includes material related to the conference’s preachers, such as: recommendations for clergy, requests for transfers, and surrendered credentials. It also includes reports from conference committees on topics such as: Bible Cause, Education (reviewing the conference’s colleges), Memoirs (drafting biographical summaries of deceased preachers), Periodicals (primarily regarding the conference’s weekly newspaper, The New Orleans Christian Advocate), Sunday Schools, and Temperance. This series also contains some correspondence and financial records.

“Series 3: Examination of character records” relates to charges brought against preachers. Most charges relate to immorality or breaking Methodist doctrine. These records document the conference’s internal proceedings and include testimony from witnesses.

Note: Series 1 and 2 contain information often appearing within the Louisiana Conference MECS annual conference journals in published or typescript form; however, some discrepancies exist (for example: the typescript statistical table for 1847 contains multiple transcription errors when compared to the original handwritten statistical table). Although much of the information in Series 1 and 2 appears in the published conference journals, it does include some unpublished material. Series 3 contains detailed information usually not published in the conference journals.