ASBURY, FRANCIS the second bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the first consecrated in the United States, was born in Handsworth, Staffordshire, England, on Aug. 20, I 745. His parents gave him a good elementary school ing of about seven years while he was between the ages of six and thirteen. Apprenticed in his 14th year to learn the business of making "buckle chapes," he devoted his odd moments to the study of Methodist theology and sermonic literature. At 18 he was licensed as a local preacher. At 21 he was received into the Wesleyan Conference and four years later was sent as a mis sionary by Wesley to America. The Methodists in America in '771 numbered a little less than 400, chiefly in the neighbourhood of New York and Philadelphia. In 1772 Asbury was appointed by Wesley "general assistant in America" but this assignment lasted only one year.
At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Asbury cast in his lot with the Americans. His loyalty to America, however, was under so much suspicion that he was forced into hiding in Dela ware for two years, 1778-79. But the discovery of a letter which he had written to England revealed such devotion to the Colonies that he was thereafter recognized as ardently American. In 1784 Wesley appointed him a superintendent of the Methodist work in America. Wesley's selection was confirmed by the meeting of all the Methodist preachers in conference. From the outset Asbury was known as bishop, though Wesley objected strenuously to this title. Asbury however, with his keener discernment of the realities 3,00o miles distant from England, saw that Methodism could succeed only by highly centralized organization, and ac cepted the title of bishop as indicating such centralization.
From 1784 until his death in 1816 Asbury threw all his energy into the Methodist work. At the time of his death the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States numbered about 214,000 members with 2,000 ministers. Asbury travelled on horseback be tween 5,00o and 6,000 miles every year during the term of his bishopric. His duties made it imperative for him to supervise all the conferences between Maine and southern Georgia, and between the Atlantic coast and the settlements in Kentucky. It was said of him that he had been seen by more people in America than had any other person up to the time of his death. Though he insisted upon keeping supervisional power almost wholly in his own hands, he won and kept the regard of the Methodist ministers and laymen to a greater degree than any other leader in the history of the Church. Throughout his life he suffered from a stubborn disease of the throat which added greatly to the dis comforts of his task, but he never relaxed in a Spartan self control, which makes the story of his life an almost incredible narrative of triumph over hardship. After coming to America he learned to read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek. At his death he left a Journal which has proved an indis pensable source-book for American social history for the first 4o years of the independence of the new nation. The style of Asbury's writing was simple and direct, with a tendency to over-serious ness, and yet with shrewd insight into the central issues in the successive ecclesiastical crises which he faced. He died in Spott sylvania, Va., March 31, 1816.
In addition to his Journal see W. P. Strickland, The Pioneer Bishop; or, The Life and Times of Francis Asbury (1858) ; Simpson's Cyclopaedia of Methodism (Philadelphia, 1878) ; Henry Mellard Du Bose, Francis Asbury (Nashville, Tenn., 1909) ; E. S. Tipple, The Prophet of the Long Road (1916) ; Henry King Carroll, The Francis Asbury Centenary Volume (Cincinnati, New York, 1916) ; Aaron W. Haines, "The Humor of Francis Asbury," Methodist Review, Ser. 5, vol. xxxvi., p. (192o) ; Henry King Carroll, Francis Asbury in the Making of American Methodism (Cincinnati and New York, 1923) ; and Herbert Asbury, A Methodist Saint; the Life of Bishop Asbury (1927). (F. J. McC.)