John Early (January 1, 1786 – November 5, 1873) was instrumental in organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and was their bishop from 1854.

He began his labors among slaves of Thomas Jefferson concentrated to erect a retreat styled Poplar Forest.

Early was received on trial in 1807 and dispatched to preach along a Meherrin River circuit reaching into North Carolina before being ordained a Deacon by Bishop Francis Asbury in 1809.

From 1825 Early was involved in banking, and used his preaching and organizational skills to promote internal improvements including Lynchburg and Salem Turnpike, James River and Kanawha Canal and Virginia and Tennessee Railroad.

[6] Methodist Episcopal Bishops appointed John Early to a Committee that developed a Plan of Separation in 1844 as the denomination split over abolition.

[8] As Book Agent for the new denomination, Early in 1854 established the highest-capacity printing plant (at Nashville, Tennessee) south of the United States Government Publishing Office.

Among countless other responsibilities, he presided over the multi-state Holston Annual Conference (1862–1865), as preachers deemed disloyal were suspended without due process.

[10] At conclusion of hostilities, Bishop Early met with U.S. President Andrew Johnson and coordinated with administrators of military occupation to retake possession of various church properties seized in war.

The Book Concern, plundered at Nashville, was also retrieved from military authorities and – with scrip and creative financing – restored to operation.

Due to his extraordinary longevity, peers at his death associated Early as connecting link to Asbury and establishment of Methodist Society in America.

The rules which ordinarily govern deliberative bodies are as familiar to him as forty years' practice can make them," wrote a chronicler in 1856.

[12] J. Rives Childs submitted transcripts of John Early's 1807–1814 Diary to the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography between 1925 & 1932, available at JSTOR.