In Queen Anne County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore stands one of the oldest Methodist chapels in America. It was built in 1783 along Red Lyon Branch on a 1.5-acre parcel known as “Sarah’s Portion” that had been donated by Joshua Dudley, a local farmer. Dudley’s Chapel – earlier known as Queen...
Edward Keenan’s conversion to the warm-hearted religion of the Methodists occurred about twenty miles away from the picturesque hollow where Old Rehoboth Church has sat for more than two hundred years. Keenan, a Roman Catholic immigrant from Ireland who had long been well-disposed toward the...
On Capitol Hill in 1917, Rev. Clarence True Wilson spotted a muddy, billboard-cluttered corner lot. Wilson, executive director of the Board of Prohibition, thought it was the perfect site for Methodism's social reform presence in Washington, D.C.
The cluster includes the United Brethren founding place at the Peter Kemp house, homes and graves of Bishops Newcomer and Russell; the Geeting house and Geeting Meetinghouse/Mt. Hebron site continuing as Salem UMC, Keedysville; Trinity United Church of Christ tower and Centennial UMC both in...
The Lovely Lane Chapel was built in 1774. Ten years later, the chapel hosted the famous Christmas Conference, where a new denomination was born: the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The idea of a Methodist academy in Abingdon, Maryland had been discussed as early as 1782. Thomas Coke (1747-1814) was John Wesley's envoy to American Methodists, making nine voyages to the United States. Coke and Francis Asbury (1745-1816) met at Barratt's Chapel in November 1784 and the...
Robert Strawbridge ( ? -1781) emigrated from Ireland to Frederick County, Maryland sometime between 1760 and 1766. A Methodist preacher in Ireland, he began preaching in Maryland soon after his arrival, making him the pioneer of Methodism on the American continent.
Old Otterbein Church is the mother church of the United Brethren in Christ and the oldest church edifice still standing in the city of Baltimore.
“Philip, you must preach to us, or we shall all go to Hell together and God will require our blood at your hands!” Safe to say, this is not a typical reaction to seeing friends playing a hand of cards. Then again, Barbara von Ruckle Heck was not typical, either. A native of the Palatinate (part...
Methodism’s influence sometimes surfaces in surprising places and unexpected ways. If your education was like mine, you were taught that the first settlers in the Pacific Northwest in the wake of Lewis and Clark were the trappers and traders following the Columbia River, following lure of gold...
