When one of the ministers of this town was speaking to a few people gathered in the open-air the company were all at once arrested by a piercing cry, and brought under deep conviction of sin. Such an occurrence, needless to say, caused a deep impression on the entire neighbourhood and from then onwards the awakening spread in all directions. Converts multiplied and prayer-meetings sprang into existence.
'The '59 Revival', by Ian R K Paisley.
“For the last two months the Lord's work has been spreading in this place; hundreds, I have reason to believe, have passed through the gate of conversion. Prayer meetings have been established here in every district and are conducted by the young and old of the neighbourhood. Let a minister be seen passing anywhere during the last three weeks and going into a house and, in a few minutes, the reapers would be seen leaving the fields and thronging the house such is their unquenchable thirst for the means of grace. There have been some conversions of Roman Catholics.
“One, for instance, who has joined the Rev. Mr Davis' Presbyterian congregation was convicted in her own garden; she prayed, although she was nineteen years of age and her mother beat her severely for doing so. She fled from the house but, on a promise of kinder treatment from her parents and by the advice of the Rev. Mr Davis, she went back and while she was at home she was heard by the family to pray 'like a Protestant.' Her mother pulled her out of bed and told her to say the 'Hail Mary.' On refusing to do this her mother again beat her severely, her father kicked her and her sister struck her with a spade. In consequence of this treatment she has left them and attends the Rev. Mr Davis' church regularly and gives all the signs of being a consistent Protestant. "For the last few weeks there has not been so many physical manifestations of the revival, but on the last Sabbath, as if in answer to the fervent prayers of many, all the churches were visited by a Divine blessing in the number of converts made. Booms Circus was here last week, but few went near it and so irritated were the men connected with it that they joined with a number of Roman Catholics in singing profane songs while the congregations were passing to and from the churches. "The Downshire Protestant" 16th September 1859
Meetings would have been in all the churches.