SHINN, Asa, clergyman, born in New Jersey, 3 May, 1781; died in Brattleboro, Vermont, in February, 1853. When he was seven years old his parents removed to Virginia. He was entirely self-educated, united with the Methodist church in 1798, and in 1800 became an itinerant preacher. After being admitted on trial by the Baltimore circuit in 1801, he was sent in 1803 to form a new circuit in the wilderness of the Ohio, on the waters of the Hockhocking. After laboring chiefly in the west and in Maryland, he withdrew in 1829 from the Methodist Episcopal church and united with the newly organized Methodist Protestant church. When the Ohio annual conference of that body was organized in October, 1829, he was elected president, and stationed at Cincinnati; and in 1833, when the Pittsburg conference was formed, he was chosen its president. From 1834 till 1836 he was associate editor of the "Methodist Protestant" at Baltimore. He was subject to attacks of insanity, and died in an asylum. He published "An Essay on the Plan of Salvation" (Baltimore, 1813), and "The Benevolence and Rectitude of the Supreme Being" (Philadelphia, 1840).