Dumbarton Origin Story
It didn't seem like much of a church at first. Judging from available records, nobody but an apprentice of the itinerant preacher took the trouble the write about it, and his account was short. Even for a town of nineteen hundred or so in the early l770's, the founding of what was to be its first Methodist church was probably something less than a sensation. Georgetown had other business. From its western vantage at the highest navigable point of the Potomac, it looked to rival Baltimore someday for the commerce that would open beyond the mountains. There were ships to unload, cargoes of rum and molasses from the Indies, tea, glass, and fine clothes from Britain and the Continent. Tobacco paid for these things, and the warehouses brimmed with it, bound for the dramshops and drawing rooms of London and Amsterdam. On the backs of the thousands they enslaved, Maryland and Virginia planters were making fortunes on smoke.
Because they needed barrels for all that tobacco, coopers were prized artisans, and the fact that the first meeting of what came to be called the Georgetown Methodist Society took place in a cooper's shop suggests that that the Society had the support of at least some of Georgetown’s most successful businessmen. But most of the faithful who gathered there a few blocks from the wharves were probably not the sort of people whose interests in rum and tobacco would have been commercial. From the first recorded account of the Society's meeting there, on Christmas Eve of 1772, you get the sense that men of the cloth in those days -— Methodist ones, at least -- must have been grateful for small favors:
Mr. Williams preached to a large room full of the inhabitants who gave some attention to the things that were said, and behaved with decency.
With these words of a 21-year-old pastoral recruit, what is now the Dumbarton United Methodist Church first made it into history. At first blush, these twenty-five words in William Watters's diary could have been a study in damnation by faint praise. Our eyewitness, no doubt still keen from his conversion a year earlier, apparently had a little difficulty finding something nice to say.
As unpromising as Methodist beginnings might have looked in this place, though, they were probably not much different from the outset of the faith in the rest of the country. Allowing for the fact that the people here were gathering in a settled community no longer on the frontier, the political, cultural, and socio-economic differences between the faithful in Georgetown and their brethren elsewhere were more likely to have been differences in degree than in kind. Some of this comes through between the lines of Watters's account. Of all the things he could have said about the occasion, it's suggestive that he chose to remark on how the gathering had "behaved with decency." He might well have expected worse. Mobs were not unknown to Methodist preachers at the time of the Revolution, and many of Watters's fellow travelers would not always be so fortunate to be accorded decent treatment.
From its beginnings in England under John Wesley in the 1730's, the kind of people to whom the early bearers of the Methodist witness appealed were often of the same sort prone to civil commotion: the poor, the heavy-laden, the low-life. Georgetown was then a part of Maryland, and when Wesley's emissary Francis Asbury first surveyed the work of the founder‘s faith in that colony, he was pleased to record in October 1772 that "swearers, liars, cockfighters, card-players, horse-racers, drunkards, etc." had become “new men." Although early Methodist Societies in Maryland and elsewhere could not have survived without the backing of at least some well-to-do believers, note that Asbury said nothing here about the church's work among, ahem, the respectable people. It's probably safe to suppose that few of the men and women who gathered among the hewings and hammerings in that cooper's shop were among the town's upper crust.
If Watters was relieved that his preceptor was not shouted down, he must also have known that the risk lay not only in the audience, but in the message. We have no way of knowing what Robert Williams told the crowd that evening, but he evidently left them somewhere short of enthralled. This must have been unusual for a man of whom, at his death in 1775, Asbury was to write that "perhaps no man in America has ministered to awakening so many souls as God has awakened by him.” It must also have been out of temper considering that Williams‘s three years of energetic revivalism in the colonies had by 1772 earned him the disapproval of at least one of his Wesleyan colleagues, who associated his and other Methodist preachings in Maryland with "wildness, shouting, and confusion in the worship." Whatever his homilectic powers that night, they apparently failed to elicit more than "some attention to the things that were said."
Given what we know of the issues confronting Methodism immediately after Asbury's arrival in the colonies, it is possible that Williams might have spoken on the need for strict adherence to the rule that only ordained ministers could administer the sacraments. This alone would have explained his apparently tepid reception. There were then no ordained Methodist preachers in the colonies, not even among those Wesley had sent here, and there would be none for the next twelve years. Meantime, people who came to Methodist meetings were expected to be baptized, take communion, marry, and be buried by the clergy of the established churches, principally the Church of England. The Anglican church, with its ties to the crown and the notorious profligacy of some of its clergy, was in something of a bad odor among many believers of the day -- the priest at the All Saints‘ Church in Frederick at the time , for example, was known as a “controversialist, a brawler, a dueler, and a sot." Wesley's sacrament rule effectively demanded that those who had sought an alternative to these worthies in the established churches would have to return to them as the source of spiritual authority over the most important rituals in their religious lives.
At the behest of the converted, and in virtual defiance of this rule laid down by Wesley himself, Robert Strawbridge had begun administering the sacraments himself. Strawbridge was an immigrant Irishman who had begun preaching and establishing Methodist "classes" in Maryland and Virginia shortly after settling his family on a farmstead about thirty-five miles northwest of Georgetown at Sam's Creek, Maryland, in the early 1760's. A rough-hewn but deeply committed layman, he was more interested in saving souls than observing ecclesiastical protocol. His earliest known baptism of a man in 1763 enabled historians to date the true founding of Methodism in America to that rite in Western Maryland. Strawbridge is also credited with having preached the first sermons in Georgetown earlier in 1772, and his converts there, like their fellows in the other towns he attended, were no doubt warmed to his more liberal approach to the sacraments.
Asbury was appalled. As Wesley's hand-picked representative to supervise the work in the New World, he could not abide such deviation with indifference. In his October journal entry on the state of Methodism in Maryland, he noted that the Lord's work among the "drunkards, etc." had progressed despite the "weakness of the instruments" spreading the Methodist gospel, and the cropping up of "some little irregularities."
Given the short time between Asbury's registering his concern on the subject and Williams's assignment to begin preaching on the circuit from Maryland to Norfolk, it is reasonable to believe that the rule on the sacraments was at least one of the topics in Williams' sermon in Georgetown. The appearance of an Englishman to enforce the Methodist discipline of the spiritual father in London would not have set well with the believers, in Georgetown or almost any other part of the colonies. If this was in fact the substance of the message, Watters must have understood that he and Williams were fortunate to have elicited a response no worse than occasional indifference. Seen in this light, his remarks might even have been more appreciative than condescending.
If the gathering in Georgetown didn't seem like much of a church in 1772, Methodism didn't seem like much of a denomination. That winter, the ten Methodist preachers who gathered in Baltimore for their first Quarterly Conference numbered only 1160 members in their fold. Under the circumstances, the wonder is not so much that Methodism succeeded, but that it even survived. Consider:
The founder of Methodism in England never intended that his "movement" become a church independent of the established Church of England. To the end of his days, John Wesley remained an Anglican priest, and his efforts were always directed toward drawing in the people whom his church could not or would not reach. Though he doubtless hoped to reform the Church from within, the network he worked so hard to foster was to provide a supplement to Anglicanism, not an alternative. Methodist meetings were not held at the time of regular worship services, but were in addition to them. The meetings were "classes" for those seeking more intensive scriptural study, and sustaining members of these classes were considered members of a Methodist “society," as distinct from a sect. Society members were expected to continue to attend their regular churches, take sacraments from their ordained clergymen, and pay taxes to support the Church of England.
From a patriot viewpoint, the politics of those who brought Methodism to the colonies could not have been worse. The Wesleyan insistence that Methodists continue supporting their regular churches was in effect an injunction to support the Church of England, especially in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic colonies where both Methodism and Anglicanism were strongest. One begins to get a sense of the suspicion that must have greeted Methodist preachments when one considers that the tax to support the Church was itself a pre-revolutionary issue in colonies like Virginia and Maryland, and there was widespread apprehension that George III might try to consolidate the official state religion by installing an Anglican bishop in the colonies.
Atop these affronts, John Wesley was an outspoken pacifist, and both he and his hymnodist brother Charles were firmly committed to the Tory side of the independence question. John Wesley's Calm Address to Our American Colonies argued, among other things, that the taxes imposed on the colonies were legitimate, and the colonists had an obligation to pay them. The Calm Address left no one but Wesley calm; it sold forty thousand copies in twenty days in late 1775, earning Wesley a minor niche in the patriots' pantheon of contempt. Some of his accolytes in the colonies also spoke out against the Revolution, and one went so far as to distribute British propaganda. Further amplifying the Methodists' quisling image in the eyes of their revolutionary countrymen, British occupation forces encouraged Wesley's order of worship in the towns under their control. Francis Asbury, struggling to contain the damage to the Methodist cause, allowed in 1776: “I am truly sorry that the venerable man ever dipped into the politics of America."
The man who did more than any other to assure the success of Methodism in the colonies never fully enjoyed its spiritual father's trust. Asbury had not been Wesley's "assistant" more than nine months when Wesley replaced him with another appointee, Thomas Rankin, in June, 1773. Asbury and Rankin soon developed a cordial detestation that persisted even during the darkest days of the war, and Asbury never forgave Rankin for his suspected poisoning of Wesley's attitude toward him. Wesley reportedly issued orders to recall Asbury altogether in 1775, but they apparently were never communicated to Asbury himself.
Even when all Wesley's other English emissaries returned to the motherland in the middle of the Revolution, and Asbury was the only one remaining to oversee the work, Wesley did not restore him to his former status. When a number of Southern preachers rebelled in 1779 and began administering the sacraments against Wesley's rule, it was Asbury who brokered a temporary peace pending further guidance from Wesley. Wesley doubtless had spiritual reasons in addition to his distrust of his agent in America, but he took a year to respond, offered no compromise, and did nothing to relieve Asbury's predicament until 1784, when he sent Thomas Coke and two other Englishmen to ordain lay preachers to give the sacraments. Asbury was ordained at the Christmas Conference of 1784 and appointed a Joint Superintendent with Coke, who had never before set foot in this country. Coke returned to England shortly thereafter, and though he was to revisit America several times, he effectively left Asbury in charge.
When Asbury began having himself referred to as bishop in 1787, however, John Wesley was shocked. "How dare you suffer yourself to be called Bishop?" he demanded in a "dear Franky" letter in 1788. His brother Charles, no less outraged, penned this acidulous little ditty in honor of the occasion:
A Roman emperor 'tis said, His favorite horse a consul made; But Coke brings greater things to pass, He makes a bishop of an ass.
There was no earthly reason a sane person would want to become a Methodist preacher in America. Between their pacifism and their professed fealty to an announced Loyalist, Methodist men of the cloth were widely assumed to be enemies of the Revolution. Freeborn Garretson, a conscientious objector was beaten, imprisoned, and twice narrowly escaped hanging. The scars of Caleb Peddicord's lashing went with him to the grave. Phiip Gatch almost lost an eye to the tar brush, and was painfully injured in an arm-twisting incident. Joseph Hartley refused to take loyalty oaths in Maryland and Virginia, and preached from jailhouse windows. Asbury himself refused to take the Maryland oath, and went into seclusion in Delaware for two years.
Even without the Revolution, the life of a Methodist preacher was no picnic. Wesley founded his ministry on a network of circuit—riding Preachers, and Asbury insisted on maintaining this practice as a means of extending the Methodist word in the colonies. Circuit-riders had no choice in the circuits they were assigned to, and were shifted to different circuits every two years. Most riders covered hundreds of miles, more in the southern and frontier areas, and they itinerated almost ceaselessly. Theirs was a world of saddle sores, aching joints, miserable food, verminous beds in drafty cabins. They knew floods, ice, Indian raids, marrow-chilling nights, and the adhesive feeling of sweat under a woolen cassock in July. And often they did it for no pay. Yearly allowances were meager, especially in southern and frontier areas where there were resentments against paid outside missionaries and strong memories of tax-paid Anglican excesses. Allowances were initially sixty-four dollars a year, raised to a fat eighty in 1800. Asbury, himself miserably reimbursed for his four to six thousand miles a year, once complained that "our poor preachers keep Lent a great part of the year here. Our towns and cities, at least our conferences, ought not to let them starve for clothing."
To forestall cooptation by the parochial interests of the congregations they served, preachers were not allowed to "locate" unless they were too sick or could no longer be away from their families. Marriage might have been God's natural state for the flock, but it was discouraged for the shepherds; figuring that he had lost two hundred of his best preachers to matrimony, Asbury viewed it as “a ceremony awful as death." Things were better after 1800, though; if her spouse could demonstrate the need, the wife of a travelling preacher could get eighty dollars a year for herself, sixteen for each child younger than seven, and twenty-four for each child between seven and fourteen years -- if money was available. Travelling preachers who chose to locate but could have continued circuit-riding forfeited this support.
There was little earthly reason for anyone else to want to be a Methodist either. To Join a Methodist society in I772 was to cast one's lot with unpopular causes: temperance in an age when hard drinking almost made sense; manumission when slavery was a booming business; pacifism under a muttering nimbus of rebellion.
Aside from the risk of tar and feathers, there were other depredations. In pre-industrial England, Methodism was a suspicious ideology on the shop floor; espousing it in the workplace could get you fired. In agrarian America the risk of losing your livelihood gave way to the prospect of other hassles, at least in the more settled areas. There were inquisitorial magistrates demanding that you sign oaths of allegiance on penalty of losing your property. You could be fined or jailed on any number of minor infractions. If you were a slave, you could be beaten. If you and your brothers and sisters in the faith were lucky enough to have a Church, you might occasionally find the militia inside watching you at worship, and at some point, during the war you might well have to burn the deed and go underground. Even if you lived in a British-occupied area, there were indignities. Services were sometimes interrupted by hectoring soldiers. One Christmas eve worship in Philadelphia ended in bedlam with the visitation of a colonel leading a band of masked intruders in the cloven-hoofed and fork-tailed costume of a devil.
Even well after the war, Methodism often labored under the hostile apparatus of post-revolutionary justice. Revivals were its stock-in-trade, and they drew thousands into camp meetings that, to the keepers of the peace at the time of the Shay's and other localized rebellions, must have bordered on unlawful assembly. Their distinctly reformist critique of the established order, let alone the commotion of the saved, must have offered the unsettling specter of a rabble of do-gooders run amok. Describing the work of the church in 1806, Asbury was to write:
But what a rumpus is raised! We are subverters of government -- disturbers of society -- movers of insurrections. Grand juries in Delaware and Virginia have presented the noisy preachers -- lawyers and doctors are in arms -- the lives, blood, and livers of the poor Methodists are threatened: poor, crazy sinners! see ye not that the Lord is with us?
If one thing can safely be said of Methodism in America, some irreducible part of the reason for its seeding and survival was not earthly. Politically, economically, socially, culturally, these were unlikely beginnings for a faith that would cone to number in the millions. It is one of history's small ironies that a hundred years after Francis Asbury celebrated the lives, blood, and subversive livers of his poor Methodists, President Theodore Roosevelt was to say that “I would rather speak before an audience of Methodists than any other audience in America. For one thing, you know that every one of them is a hundred percent American."
How did this transformation from splinter group to social pillar come to pass? What were the spiritual roots of this earthly fruition, its doctrinal and ecclesiastical underpinnings, and how did they change? What does this change tell us about the Methodist Church? What does the career of Methodism tell us about religion in the shaping of America? How did the difference between spiritual prophecy and social progressivism come to be blurred, and at what cost?
This book, in part, is an examination of these and other questions arising at the junctures between religion and history. It is also an illumination of the past of a particular church that speaks to these questions. The Dumbarton Church was present at the creation. Its early preachers -- Strawbridge, Gatch, Garretson, and others, played important parts in making an imported faith a distinctively American institution. Their principles and their example inform Methodism today. Later generations of Dumbarton preachers and their congregations would sustain or help found six other churches, including some of the first black congregations in the United States, and the first school for blacks in its capital. One Dumbarton preacher, Taylor, would go on to establish the first Methodist mission to California, and the first to India. During the antebellum years, Dumbarton had some of the Church's most outspoken voices both for and against slavery, and they were to play important roles in the events that led to division of the Church. It is a colorful history, worthy of celebration in its own right, but its greater significance lies in the light it sheds on the whole, not only of Methodism, but American society and culture. Its story is an emblem of that story, its chronicle the index of a vitally American faith, both among its believers and beyond them.