Francis Asbury
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Francis Asbury (August 20, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.
Born at Hamstead Bridge, Staffordshire, England of Methodist parents, Asbury became a local preacher at eighteen and was ordained at age twenty-two. His boyhood home still stands and is open as a museum in West Bromwich, England. In 1771 he volunteered to travel to America. When the American War of Independence broke out in 1776 he was the only Methodist minister to remain in America.
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the next thirty-two years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America.
Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers.
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[edit] His Journal
Asbury kept a journal assiduously; on December 8 1812 he crossed the Broad River into York County, South Carolina and came to the home of David Leech, Esq. He states in his journal that Leech offered him a Bible and a bottle of brandy; he wrote, "I took one." His journal also contains some references to conversations with ministers who disagreed with the Methodist leadership. Rev. Charles Hopkins of Powhatan County, Virginia had rejected the Methodist ideals several years before. After Hopkins and Asbury had a heated exchange in Cartersville, an aggravated Asbury wrote that he had been in "Satan's Ville". Years before Asbury had complained in his diary of a German Lutheran man named (Jacob) Bookter in upper Richland County, South Carolina, who charged him too much for a night's lodging for himself and his horse. The incident so inflamed Asbury that he was said to have converted a good number of Lutherans in a fiery sermon the next day.
[edit] Namesakes
There are three schools named after Asbury, two located in Wilmore, Kentucky: Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary. In addition, DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana was originally known as Indiana Asbury College after him. Also Francis Asbury Elementary school in Hampton Virginia. In addition, the town of Asbury Park, New Jersey and the former Asbury Methodist Church on Staten Island (now the Son-Rise Interfaith Center) stand as monuments to his memory in areas known to have been part of his missionary work. An equestrian statue of Asbury was erected in Washington, D.C. in 1921.
Asbury's boyhood home, Bishop Asbury Cottage, in Sandwell, England, is now a museum.
A hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park follows part of the path Asbury took when crossing the mountains in the early 1800s. There is a monument dedicated to Asbury at Shiloh Memorial Cemetery in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where Asbury delivered a sermon on October 20, 1808.
Bishop Asbury died in Spotsylvania, Virginia, and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore near the graves of Bishops John Emory and Beverly Waugh.
[edit] Sources
[edit] References and Resources for Further Study
- The official Francis Asbury web site. Contains an A-Z index of places and people mentioned in his journals.
- Trailblazin' Bishop: The Francis Asbury Story. A one-man play on the life of Francis Asbury.
- Francis Asbury biographical sketch on Find-A-Grave
- Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury (1958) by Francis Asbury (ISBN 0-687-20581-6)
- America's Bishop: The Life of Francis Asbury (2003) by Darius Salter (ISBN 1-928915-39-6)
- The Story of American Methodism: A History of the United Methodists and Their Relations (1974) by Frederick Abbott Norwood (ISBN 0-687-39641-7)
- The Heritage of American Methodism (1999) by Kenneth Cain Kinghorn (ISBN 0-687-05500-8)
- From Wesley to Asbury: Studies in Early American Methodism (1976) by Frank Baker (ISBN 0-8223-0359-0)
- Eliza Asbury - her cottage and her son by David Hallam (ISBN 1858582350
[edit] See also
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asbury, Francis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | One of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1745 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Handsworth, Birmingham, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1816 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
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Categories: 1745 births | 1816 deaths | History of Christianity in the United States | American Methodist bishops | Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church | History of Methodism in the United States | American colonial people | English immigrants to the United States | Monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C. | English missionaries | Christian missionaries in North America | American diarists | English migrants to British North America | Burials at Mount Olivet Cemetery (Baltimore) | English Methodist clergy | Methodist missionaries | Clergy in the American Revolution | American pioneers | Appalachian culture
