An exceptional 1826 Ordination certificate issued and signed by Methodist Bishop, Joshua Soule [1781-1867]. 

Born in Bristol, Maine, Soule was the great-great-great-grandson of George Soule, who in 1620 arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts as a Mayflower Pilgrim, eventually becoming a prominent Duxbury landowner.

Although his parents were strict Presbyterians, the adolescent Joshua Soule converted to the Methodist Episcopal faith in 1797, joining the New England Annual Conference in 1799. And he was a sensation. At just 17 years of age, he became known as a "Boy Preacher," and an articulate opponent of Calvinism, Unitarianism and Universalism. And at 23 years old he was appointed presiding elder and placed in charge of the state of Maine. He also served as a book agent for the M.E. Church. In 1820, he was elected bishop, but declined consecration because the General Conference had adopted a policy he could not approve. He did accept episcopal consecration upon being elected again in 1824.

In the 1844 split of the M. E. Church, he helped form and frame the documents of the new Methodist Episcopal Church, South. All issues aside, the Methodist Episcopal Church South existed for one reason, to reject abolitionist influence in the South.  Soule was deeply influential in the new movement. A University in Texas was named in his honor in 1856. At that time there was another Methodist institution of higher learning named for Joshua Soule, Soule College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. To this day, there are more than a dozen churches in the South that continue to bear his name. 

At the age of 85, worn out with labor and travel, He died in Nashville in 1867; his body was buried at the old Nashville City Cemetery. In 1876 it was reinterred on the campus of Vanderbilt University.