His name was George Ferguson and he was a real firecracker. George had fought in the War of 1812 and his personality was what one might expect of a soldier who knew how to rough it in the bush and keep out of sight from the enemy. He was ordained as an itinerant minister with the Methodist Episcopal Church, mostly likely in the United States, but he quickly developed a reputation in Upper Canada for his relentless work and a strong will. One of his friends described him as ""self consuming" and as "an old war horse who, sniffing the smell of battle, left his retirement and again mounted his war horse in [the Dumfries] circuit." Ferguson was known for his fervent revivalism, his total dedication to the Methodist Episcopal church against its arch rival the British Wesleyan Methodists and, when the Methodist Episcopal’s joined ranks with the Wesleyans in a controversial union in 1833, as an ardent defender of the new Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada.

It was in 1819 that George Ferguson organized the Dumfries Circuit, including places like St. George and north - Galt, Hespler, Berlin and up to Waterloo, among others. It was he who sought the approval of this circuit in the then governing conference located in New York State. In fact this church’s roots go all the way back to John Wesley, in England, who, out of a strong sense of evangelism, wanted to take the Word of God as preached in the Church of England among the ordinary and less fortunate folk of society. George Ferguson reflected the Wesleyan spirit in the context of a new and developing land.