Childhood and adolescence , Asbury's boyhood home at
Great Barr Francis Asbury was born at
Hamstead Bridge,
Staffordshire, England on August 20 or 21, 1745, to Elizabeth and Joseph Asbury. The family moved to a cottage at
Great Barr the next year. His boyhood home still stands and is open as
Bishop Asbury Cottage museum. Soon after the family moved to Great Barr, in May 1748, Asbury's older sister, Sarah, died; he was less than three years old. Asbury wrote later that his mother Eliza was "very much a woman of the world"; with his sister's death, she "sank into deep distress....from which she was not relieved for many years," and was living "in a very, dark, dark, dark, day and place". Eliza's deep faith may not have been shared by her husband, who seemed to have problems, possibly drink or gambling. Francis Asbury described his father as "industrious." The husband supported his wife in her faith and witness: he allowed Methodist meetings to be held each Sunday in the cottage. During Asbury's childhood the West Midlands was undergoing massive changes as the industrial revolution swept through the area. Waves of workers migrated into the area, attracted by jobs in the growing factories and workshops in
Birmingham and the mines of the
Black Country. The Asburys lived in a cottage tied to a
public house, on a main route between the mines and the factories. They would have been aware of the drinking, gambling, poverty and poor behaviour prevalent in the area. Francis Asbury attended a local endowed school in Snail's Green, a nearby hamlet. He did not get on well with his fellow pupils who ridiculed him because of his mother's religious beliefs. During the 1740s there had been widespread anti-Methodist rioting in
Wednesbury and the surrounding area, and into the 1750s a great deal of persecution. Nor did he like his teacher and left school at the first opportunity. Asbury took a keen interest in religion, having "felt something of God as early as the age of seven". He lived not far from All Saints' Church, West Bromwich, which under the patronage of the Methodist
Earl of Dartmouth, provided a living for Evangelical minister Edward Stillinghurst. Well connected, Stillinghurst invited as visiting preachers some of the foremost preachers and theologians of the day. These included
John Fletcher, John Ryland,
Henry Venn,
John Cennick and
Benjamin Ingham. His mother encouraged Francis to meet with the Methodists in Wednesbury, eventually joining a "band" with four other young men who would meet and pray together. For them a typical Sunday would be a preaching meeting at 5.00 am, communion at the parish church mid morning, and attending a preaching meeting again at 5.00 pm. Asbury had his first formal job at age thirteen; he went "into service" for local gentry, whom he later described as "one of the most unGodly families in the parish" but he soon left them and is believed to have eventually worked for Thomas Foxall, at the Old Forge Farm, where he made metal goods. He became great friends with Foxall's son, Henry. They developed a friendship, which continued after Henry Foxall's emigration to Colonial America. There he continued working with metal and established the
Foundry Church in Georgetown, now part of Washington, D.C. Asbury began to preach locally, and eventually became an itinerant preacher on behalf of the Methodist cause. Asbury's preaching ministry in England is detailed in the section below: "Asbury's circuits in England".
Asbury's work in America At the age of 22, Asbury's selection by
John Wesley as a traveling lay preacher became official. Typically such positions were held by young, unmarried men, known as exhorters. In 1771 Asbury volunteered to travel to
British North America. His first sermon in the Colonies took place with the Methodist congregation in
Woodrow, Staten Island. Within the first 17 days of being in the colonies, Asbury preached in both
Philadelphia and
New York City. During the first year, he served as Wesley's assistant and preached in 25 different settlements. When the
American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he and
James Dempster were the only British Methodist lay ministers to remain in America. "During his early years in North America, Asbury devoted his attention mainly to followers living on the eastern shore between the
Delaware River and the
Chesapeake Bay. Bishop Asbury was a good friend of the Melsons and was their guest many times on his rounds. When the American revolution severed the traditional ties between the American Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, Bishop Asbury, in the interest of his religious tenets and principles and in an attempt to remain aloof from the political and military fervor that swept the country, announced he would, to keep the embryonic Methodist congregations neutral, refrain from endorsing either Great Britain or the newly formed United States of America government and urged all his followers to do the same. This request placed almost all of his followers, especially those living in
Maryland, in an untenable position. The State of Maryland had enacted a law requiring all citizens to take an Oath of Allegiance to the newly formed American Congress. In addition to this, it stipulated all non-residents within its boundaries also had to take and sign an Oath of Allegiance. Those refusing were summarily incarcerated for treason. Asbury, after proclaiming his neutrality, fled to
Delaware, where taking an oath of allegiance was not a requirement. His adherents in Maryland suffered the rancor of the proponents of the Oath."Asbury remained hidden during the war and ventured occasionally back into Maryland. Sometimes this had the effect of compromising his parishioners. Asbury did not become ordained or a bishop until December 1784. Asbury taught that “slavery was a crime against the laws of God, man, and nature”. In 1780, Asbury met the
freedman Henry "Black Harry" Hosier, a meeting the minister believed "providentially arranged". Under Asbury's influence Methodists made African-Americans a special target for missionary work, leading to a large number of converts; and by 1800 nearly 20,000 African-Americans were Methodists, about one third of the overall Methodist population in America.
A camp meeting In the fall of 1800, Asbury attended one of the events of the
Revival of 1800 as he travelled from Kentucky into Tennessee. The combined Presbyterian and Methodist communion observance made a deep impression on Asbury; it was as an early experience for him of multi-day meetings, which included attendees camping on the grounds or sleeping in their wagons around the meeting house. He recorded the events in his journal: it showed the relation between religious revivalism and
camp meetings, later a staple of nineteenth-century frontier Methodism.
Ordained and consecrated a bishop In 1784,
John Wesley named Asbury and
Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in the United States. The
Christmas Conference that year marked the beginning of the
Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States. It was during this Conference that Asbury was ordained by Coke. For the next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. However, his leadership did not go unchallenged. His idea for a ruling council was opposed by such notables as
William McKendree,
Jesse Lee, and
James O'Kelly. Eventually, based on advice by Coke, he established in 1792 a
General Conference, to which delegates could be sent, as a way of building broader support.
His journeys Like Wesley, Asbury preached in myriad 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 6,000 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. Among the men he ordained was
Richard Allen in
Philadelphia, the first black Methodist minister in the United States who later founded the
African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the country. Another African American was
Daniel Coker, who emigrated to
Sierra Leone in 1820 and became the first Methodist minister there from the West. Bishop Asbury also ordained
Peter Cartwright in the fall of 1806.
Failing health and death In 1813, Asbury wrote his will. This was a time when "the greatest membership gain in the history of the church" was achieved. In 1814 his health started to fail and he became ill. In 1816 he started to regain strength and continued his preaching journey. He "preached his last Sermon in Richmond, Virginia" on March 24, "and died at the home of George Arnold near Fredericksburg" on March 31. Bishop Asbury died in
Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He was buried at
Mount Olivet Cemetery, in
Baltimore, near the graves of Bishops
John Emory and
Beverly Waugh.
Ability as a preacher In an exciting time in American history, Asbury was reported to be an extraordinary preacher. Biographer
Ezra Squier Tipple wrote: "If to speak with authority as the accredited messenger of God; to have credentials which bear the seal of heaven ... if when he lifted the trumpet to his lips the Almighty blew the blast; if to be conscious of an ever-present sense of God, God the Summoner, God the Anointing One, God the Judge, and to project it into speech which would make his hearers tremble, melt them with terror, and cause them to fall as dead men; if to be and do all this would entitle a man to be called a great preacher, then Asbury was a great preacher." ==Personal habits==