Elon College, North Carolina 751132 FRANCIS ASBURY in NORTH CAROLINA with Introductory Notes by GRADY L. E. CARROLL Francis Asbury IN North Carolina The North Carolina Portions o£ The Journal of Francis Asbury (Volumes I and II of Clark Edition) with Introductory Notes by GRADY L. E. CARROLL "I am willing to travel and preach as long as I live; and I hope I shall not live long after I am unable to travel." Journal—M^ixch 17, 1782 "Live or die, I must ride." Journal—March 29, 1797 ". it is hard to civilize, methodize, and spiritualize; sin, Satan, flesh, and hell are against us." /owrna/—March 18, 1792 751123 SET UP, PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE PARTHENON PRESS AT NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE FRANCIS ASBURV [.Etat. circa 63] From the Portrait Painted bv Rniff in 1808 Digitized by the Internet Archive ' in 2014 https://archive.org/details/francisasburyinnOOasbu This book is dedicated to All North Carolina Methodists, Spiritual Sons and Daughters of Bishop Francis Asbury CONTENTS page Introduction 9 Illustrations 95, 244 Chapter One Francis Asbury's First through Seventeenth Visits: 1780-1789 29 Chapter Two Francis Asbury's Eighteenth through Thirty- Seventh Visits: 1790-1799 97 Chapter Three Francis Asbury's Thirty-Eighth through Sixtieth Visits: 1800-1809 169 Chapter Four Francis Asbury's Sixtieth through Seventy-Second Visits: 1810-1816 245 A Chronology for the Life of Francis Asbury 275 Roster of Ordinations by Francis Asbury in North Carolina 278 North Carolina's Monetary System Before and After Statehood 279 Bibliography 281 Index of Sermon Texts 285 General Index 287 Introduction Francis Asbury, first and greatest bishop of American Methodism, was born on August 20/21, 1745, in Hands- worth, near Birmingham, England. He came to the New World for missionary endeavor in 1771. For the next nearly half century. Dr. John O. Gross summarizes, he traveled "270,000 miles," preached "16,425 sermons," "presided over 224 conferences," "ordained 4,000 preachers" i and helped Methodism outstrip the growth of the population five to one. Francis Asbury, "The Prophet of the Long Road"—to use Dr. E. S. Tipple's phrase—traveled some 6,000 miles an- nually, ever extending boundaries of his labors, until they reached from the province of Maine to Georgia and west- ward to Ohio. He was one of the best known men of his day and one of the most often seen. His almost ceaseless, though not haphazard, activity earned him the epithet of "Bishop of North America" by one church historian. He kept a chronicle of his lengthy American ministry in a remarkable Journal which was published in installments during his life- time. After generations of neglect, the Journal has been fully edited and made available. Brief examination of the Journal (E. T. Clark edition) 2 reveals that Francis Asbury first came to the then colony of North Carolina in 1780 and last passed through the state in his final year, 1816. The eminent ecclesiastical statesman visited the state seventy-two times, but left no account of his final visit. Tipple in his biography, Francis Asbury: The Prophet of the Long Road (162) 3 could count only sixty-three such visits. The primary purpose has been to present the story of Francis Asbury's missionary endeavor in North Carolina in one volume, in the belief that his distinctive contribu- 1 The Beginnings of Methodism, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1961, 58. 2 Epworth Press. London, and Abingdon Press, Nashville, Vols. I and II, 1958. 3 Methodist Book Concern, Cincinnati and New York, 1916. 9 ; 10 FRANCIS ASBURY IN NORTH CAROLINA tion to the growth and spread of the Methodist movement at first, and then the newly organized "Methodist Episcopal Church in America" (original name) in the state, has not received its rightful share of attention. The seventy-one North Carolina portions of the Journal have been assembled, with their accompanying footnotes. I have retained the Clark annotations with as few changes as possible. Alterations have been renumbering footnotes, by necessity; taking footnotes indicating counties in which Asbury was traveling and inserting this information in As- bury's accounts, in parentheses, which he used sparingly; and rearrangement of some bibliographical items. Through my introductory notes, I have attempted to provide some semblance of a framework on the accounts of visits, seeking thereby to provide unity, clarity and perspective. The notes include: dates of Asbury's entry and departure, with exception of several conjectured dates; his age on each visit; general direction of itineraries, although no effort has been made to indicate length or starting point of itineraries to and through the state (notes indicate only border states from which he came and to which he went) traveling companion (s) ; lengthiest and briefest visits of various decades, plus frequency of multiple visits in one- year periods and milestones and unusual events in his career. Some notes on North Carolina history have been provided, with some on Asbury's outstanding con- temporaries. As to bibliographical items used in my introductory notes, I have kept the citations independent of those used in the Clark edition of the Journal, in the interest of simplicity and clarity. A better understanding of Asbury's missionary endeavors may be gained from a brief backward glance at geograph- ical, political, religious and educational aspects of the state. North Carolina is a South Atlantic state, with a total land and water area of 52,712 square miles. Consisting of one hundred counties, its extreme length from east to west is 503 miles; its greatest breadth from north to south is 187 miles; its average breadth from north to south is 100 FRANCIS ASBURY IN NORTH CAROLINA 11 miles. It is divided into three geographical regions: mountain, Piedmont and coastal. The Great Smoky Mountains and Blue Ridge are part of the Appalachian system reaching into the state. Mt. Mitchell, 6,684 feet above sea level, is the highest mountain in the eastern United States. The state has six major rivers: Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, Cape Fear, Yadkin and Catawba. It has two major sounds, Pamlico and Albemarle, and several smaller sounds, Currituck, Core, Bogue and Roanoke. The average wind direction in the state is from the southwest; moderate to warm temperatures prevail over the state most of the time. No place in the state has extreme temperatures, high or low, for very long.^ When Francis Asbury arrived in 1780 for his initial visit. North Carolina, with her sister colonies, was in the midst of political and military struggles. North Carolinians had drawn up the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775 and the Halifax Resolves, "first official state action for independence," on April 12, 1776—dates of such significance in its history that they have been placed on the state flag. The Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge had occurred on February 27, 1776; the first State Constitution had been adopted in 1776; Richard Caswell (1729-1789) had been elected the first governor of the independent state of North Carolina in 1776. With signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1783, which made North Carolina an inde- pendent state, settlers were free to continue westward move- ment. By 1800, every section of North Carolina had white settlers except the Indian country in the southwest corner.^ The achievement of political independence and con- tinued growth of population were followed by the forma- tion of still other counties. At the time of Asbury's arrival, the colony consisted of some forty-seven counties, fewer * Lemert, B. F. and Harrelson, M. L., North Carolina Geography, Harlow Publishing Company, Oklahoma City, 1958 (2, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16). 5 Newsome, Albert Ray, and Lefler, Hugh T., The Growth of North Caro- lina. Yonkers-On-Hudson, New York, World Book Company, 1947, 138-142; 157- 158. 12 FRANCIS ASBURY IN NORTH CAROLINA than half its present number.^ Some fifteen new counties were formed between 1780 and 1816, the thirty-six years of his association with the state.*^ The estimated population of the colony and early years of statehood, prior to the first official United States Census in 1790, provided in the North Carolina Manual, 1953, (35) was 4,000 in 1675; 5,000 in 1701; 7,000 in 1707; 11,000 in 1715; 35,000 in 1729; 100,000 in 1752; 200,000 in 1765; 250,000 in 1771 and 350,000 in 1786.8 As to religion, several denominations had already been established in the state prior to Asbury's arrival. The Anglican Church had been established by law in the early eighteenth century.^ The "dissenting sects" already estab- lished included: Baptists (several branches) , Lutherans, Moravians, Presbyterians, German Reformed, and Quakers. Asbury had been preceded by George Whitefield (pro- nounced Whitfield) , foremost evangelist of the English- speaking world of his day, and Joseph Pilmoor (pro- nounced Pilmore) , official Wesley itinerant to the New World, as himself, in 1772. The story of their coming has been related in Louise Stahl's Lest We Forget: Sketches of Some Makers of Early Methodism in North Carolina and elsewhere. The Methodists were the last Protestant sect to appear in the colony, in the royal colony period (1729- 1775) .10 In Asbury's lifetime, educational opportunities in the state were limited. Travelers to the state were aware of the 8 Anson, Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Brunswick, Burke, Camden, Carteret, Caswell, Chatham, Chowan, Craven, Cumberland, Currituck, Duplin, Edge- combe, Franklin, Gates, Granville, Guilford, Halifax, Hertford, Hyde, Johnston, Jones, Lincoln, Martin, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Nash, New Hanover, Northampton, Onslow, Orange, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Pitt, Randolph, Richmond, Rowan, Rutherford, Surry, Tyrrell, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilkes. (Newsome and Lefler, op. cit., 451, 452.) 7 Ashe (1799), Buncombe (1797), Cabarrus (1792).