HISTORY OF KENTUCKY, by Lewis Collins, and J.A. & U.P. James, published 
1847.  Reprinted by Henry Clay Press, Lexington, Ky., 1968, pp. 125-126. 
[Jessamine county].

FRANCIS POYTHRESS was admitted into the traveling connection at a 
conference held in Baltimore, on the 21st of May, 1776.  In 1778, he was 
sent out to Kentucky in the capacity of an elder.  As a preacher, few in 
those days excelled him. His voice was clear and musical; his knowledge 
of the scriptures vast and accurate; his sermons bedewed with his tears 
in his closet, fell as the dews of life upon the hearts of his congregation; 
sinners trembled before the Lord, and the keen flash of the Spirit's sword 
was felt passing all through the soul, discerning by its brightness, the
"thoughts and intents of the heart."  In the visit Bishop Asbury made to 
Kentucky in 1790, a single note made in his journal pours a flood of light 
upon the secret of his success.  He says:  "I met the preachers in 
conference," and adds: "Brother Poythress is much alive to God."  Sermons 
anointed with the spirit of God, and baptized in the blood of the Lamb, will 
always "burn as fire in dry stubble."  Brother Poythress continued to travel 
in the west, mainly in Kentucky, until the spring of 1800, when he attended 
the general conference held in Baltimore, at which conference he was 
appointed to a district in North Carolina, incuding circuits from the sea 
shore to the summitt of the Blue Ridge. The excessive draughts made upon 
his mind and body, by the labor of this district, unsettled his mental 
balance, so that during the summer he became partially deranged.
        In the fall of 1800, he returned to Kentucky to his sister's, the 
widow Prior, who then resided in Jessamine county, about three miles 
from Nicholasville, wehre he remained a confirmed lunatic until his 
death.

Asbury Poythress Prior
=
MD NC

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/jessamine/poythress.f.txt