David B. Mintz

David B. Mintz was an early-nineteenth-century minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North Carolina. He was a revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, and published two collections of camp meeting songs, despite the official stance of the Methodist Church which prohibited popular folk hymns.

Life Very little is known of Mintz' early life. His father may have been John Mintz, who owned land in Johnston County, North Carolina in 1761. He may also have had a brother, John Westley Martin Bryan Mintz, who bought land in New Bern in 1812.

At the 1802 Methodist Episcopal Church annual conference in Virginia, Mintz was made a travelling circuit rider minister on a standard one year probationary trial, and was stationed in the Amherst circuit. He was made a deacon in 1803, and was assigned the Gloucester, North Carolina circuit. In 1804, he was stationed in the Pamlico circuit, and in 1805 – only three years after becoming a minister – was made an elder, and took on the Tar River circuit with John French. That year he published the Spiritual Song Book, his first collection of camp meeting hymns, printed by Abraham Hodge in Halifax. Mintz bought land in New Bern "on the east side of Front Street and upon the Neuse River" in 1811, He continued to receive money from the estate of Susannah's first husband for the upkeep of their children until January 1, 1816, after which mentions of him cease, and by the time of the 1820 United States census, Susannah was listed as head of the household. Lorenzo's Thoughts on Various Religious Opinions by Lorenzo Dow (1806)