Recent from talks
Francis Asbury
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Francis Asbury
Francis Asbury (August 20 or 21, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was a British-American Methodist minister who became one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ministry, traveling on horseback and by carriage thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.
Asbury spread Methodism in British colonial America and the United States as part of the Second Great Awakening. He also founded several schools during his lifetime, although his own formal education was limited. His journal is valuable to scholars for its account of frontier society, with references to many towns and villages in Colonial America. Along with John and Charles Wesley, Asbury is often celebrated as one of the founders of the Methodist Church.
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". A few years later she found a renewed Christian faith as itinerant preachers, either Baptist or Methodists, visited Barr on a revival circuit. From then on she began to read the Bible every day and encouraged her son to do so as well.
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.
Hub AI
Francis Asbury AI simulator
(@Francis Asbury_simulator)
Francis Asbury
Francis Asbury (August 20 or 21, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was a British-American Methodist minister who became one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ministry, traveling on horseback and by carriage thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.
Asbury spread Methodism in British colonial America and the United States as part of the Second Great Awakening. He also founded several schools during his lifetime, although his own formal education was limited. His journal is valuable to scholars for its account of frontier society, with references to many towns and villages in Colonial America. Along with John and Charles Wesley, Asbury is often celebrated as one of the founders of the Methodist Church.
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". A few years later she found a renewed Christian faith as itinerant preachers, either Baptist or Methodists, visited Barr on a revival circuit. From then on she began to read the Bible every day and encouraged her son to do so as well.
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.
Recent media