Tour 1
West Virginia's
eastern panhandle
Originally Berkeley County, Virginia, it consisted of Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson Counties by the time of the Civil War. From John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry through the secession of Virginia from the Union; of Morgan and its western neighbors from Virginia to West Virginia; and the decision of Berkeley and Jefferson counties to join West Virginia, the Civil War was particularly hard-felt in this area and sectional feelings were reflected in the churches.
Methodism had been strong in Old Berkeley County since the disestablishment of the Church of England at independence. The migration of Pennsylvania Germans through Western Maryland brought the Evangelical and United Brethren to the area as well. The unusual geography of the panhandle convinced the modern United Methodist Church not to adhere rigidly to state lines, but to keep this area in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, and Garrett County, Maryland in the West Virginia Conference.
Old Asbury Church / Old Trinity Churchyard
Church & High Streets
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
A church has occupied this site since 1745 when a log chapel of ease was built by the Frederick Parish of the Anglican Church of Virginia. When Shepherdstown was incorporated as Mecklenburg in 1762, Church Street derived its name from this chapel which was replaced by the stone Mecklenburg Church seven years later. The churchyard became the burial place of pioneers and patriots but the church itself was abandoned during the Revolution, and the Protestant Episcopal Church would not reopen it until after the War of 1812.
Methodists had likely built their own church on New Street (see below) by 1816 when the Episcopalians came to reclaim the church on High Street, which they rechristened Trinity. In 1859 Trinity Church built a new building on German Street, leaving the church on High Street to be used as a circuit courthouse and as a hospital after the Battle of Antietam.
African-American Methodists had built a chapel on Rocky Street which was destroyed by fire during the Civil War. Trinity allowed this congregation to occupy its old church on High Street: “for ye worship of God and ye services of religion in such sense as these words have heretofore been commonly understood” but the Vestry of Trinity retained the right to decide if the use was consistent with that purpose “lest the deed be forfeited.”
After the war, a freedmen’s school operated in Old Asbury. The church became part of the Washington Conference in 1864 and, in 1867, purchased the church from Trinity for $350.00. The steeple was lost in an 1890 storm but the congregation worshipped here until 1988 when a new Asbury Church was built a mile outside town at Morgan Grove.
New Street Church
New & Church Streets
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
About the time the Mecklenburg Chapel; was abandoned, Methodism came to town through the preaching of Freeborn Garretson and the town was soon part of the Berkeley Circuit. In the summer of 1789 Bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal of an outdoor meeting near the town which attracted 700 people on Saturday and over a thousand on Sunday.
Five years later he returned feeling too sick to preach as he recorded in his Journal “but when I saw the people coming on every side. . .I took my staff, faintly ascended the hill, and held forth on John 1:6-7. After meeting I administered the sacrament and then returned to my bed.”
The log and frame Methodist Church on New Street which was the center of Jefferson Circuit after 1820 and Shepherdstown Circuit after 1840 was destroyed by fire in 1853 and replaced by a new brick church the next year. A crowd described as “old and young, little and big, black and white, bonded and free” came to the dedication of the New Street Church though, at some point, African-Americans built a separate chapel on Rocky Street from which would evolve Asbury Church (see above).
Methodists were split by sectional loyalty after the Civil War. After the church trustees had allowed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South to occupy the church, a court case over the property was decided in favor of the Methodist Episcopal Church [North]. For a time, the preachers appointed by the two denominations even occupied separate parts of the same parsonage.
The Southern church built a separate building at German and King Sts. (now the War Memorial Building) which they occupied until reunification in 1940. The reunited church worshipped in that space while a new facility was built on New Street. The old brick structure was retained and incorporated into the larger brick structure which opened on the old church’s centennial in 1954.
Francis Asbury Church, Bath
Congress & Wilkes Streets
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia
Francis Asbury Church, Trinity-Asbury UMC since merging with the former Trinity United Brethren Church in 2009, has worshipped on this site since 1845 when it replaced the town’s first church, built in 1787 on Independence Street. The first church on this site was replaced in 1890 and has stood here since that time. It was appropriately named for Bishop Asbury, who had first been brought to “the Springs” by Harry Dorsey Gough, Master of Perry Hall, in 1776. The bishop would have a vexed relationship with Bath, finding the waters restorative but their visitors troubling.
Six months after the Christmas Conference of 1784 Bishop Asbury rode from Shepherdstown “to the Springs called Bath; now under great improvement.” Since his ordination, he had ridden to South Carolina and back, calling upon Gen. Washington at Mt. Vernon and breaking ground for Cokesbury College a month earlier. He returned within weeks for the curative waters “called to the exercise of patience” for a week’s rest, during which his spirit was “grieved at so much vanity as is seen here at Bath, by the many poor careless sinners around me.”
Returning to Bath two years later as “my stomach wants all the healing efficacy of the waters to restore it to health,” he was again grieved by his fellow bathers whose “evil was only to be remedied by getting our own preaching house and preaching therein by candlelight.” Such a structure was in progress when he returned the next summer and he “preached the two following days with some satisfaction” and arranged “to have our chapel covered by the first of August.”
That August of 1787 the bishop felt “calm within, and the want of more life and more love to God, and more patience with sinners. I read my Testament. O what weariness would life be without God, and love, and labour. The first two weeks of my time at Bath have been spent in carrying on the building of the new chapel.” The last Sunday of the month the bishop “preached on ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings’ &c (Isaiah 52:7). It was a solemn time – my soul was stayed upon God. We had a melting sacrament and love feast and many spoke.”
This idyll was interrupted, however, when “[Rev. Richard] Whatcoat spoke at the steps, and it was with difficulty the people kept themselves within decent bounds of respect.” This was the year in which John Wesley nominated Whatcoat for bishop, only to be rebuffed by American Conference. Asbury was outraged by Bath’s disrespect, writing of the incident that “the devil is angry and so are his children.”
Days later in Shepherdstown, the bishop wrote that “it is a paradise regained with me since I left Bath and the wicked there.” At Bath the next summer, the bishop received word that both teachers employed at Cokesbury College had left the school. His preaching may have suffered from these “heavy tidings.” He evaluated his own sermon the next Sunday on “the lame and the blind” as being “very ‘lame’; and it may be I left my hearers as I found them, ‘blind’.”
The following year’s respite at Bath led Asbury to declare that “When I behold the conduct of the people who attend the Springs, particularly the gentry, I am led to thank God that I was not born to riches.” It was five years later, 1793, that he again mentioned Bath, “that seat of sin” where “I hope for some relief from my rheumatic complaint which has so oppressed me for six months past. The people here are so gay and idle that I doubt there being much good done among them.” His Journal mentions “the Springs” only in passing after that.
West Virginia's
eastern panhandle
Originally Berkeley County, Virginia, it consisted of Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson Counties by the time of the Civil War. From John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry through the secession of Virginia from the Union; of Morgan and its western neighbors from Virginia to West Virginia; and the decision of Berkeley and Jefferson counties to join West Virginia, the Civil War was particularly hard-felt in this area and sectional feelings were reflected in the churches.
Methodism had been strong in Old Berkeley County since the disestablishment of the Church of England at independence. The migration of Pennsylvania Germans through Western Maryland brought the Evangelical and United Brethren to the area as well. The unusual geography of the panhandle convinced the modern United Methodist Church not to adhere rigidly to state lines, but to keep this area in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, and Garrett County, Maryland in the West Virginia Conference.
Old Asbury Church / Old Trinity Churchyard
Church & High Streets
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
A church has occupied this site since 1745 when a log chapel of ease was built by the Frederick Parish of the Anglican Church of Virginia. When Shepherdstown was incorporated as Mecklenburg in 1762, Church Street derived its name from this chapel which was replaced by the stone Mecklenburg Church seven years later. The churchyard became the burial place of pioneers and patriots but the church itself was abandoned during the Revolution, and the Protestant Episcopal Church would not reopen it until after the War of 1812.
Methodists had likely built their own church on New Street (see below) by 1816 when the Episcopalians came to reclaim the church on High Street, which they rechristened Trinity. In 1859 Trinity Church built a new building on German Street, leaving the church on High Street to be used as a circuit courthouse and as a hospital after the Battle of Antietam.
African-American Methodists had built a chapel on Rocky Street which was destroyed by fire during the Civil War. Trinity allowed this congregation to occupy its old church on High Street: “for ye worship of God and ye services of religion in such sense as these words have heretofore been commonly understood” but the Vestry of Trinity retained the right to decide if the use was consistent with that purpose “lest the deed be forfeited.”
After the war, a freedmen’s school operated in Old Asbury. The church became part of the Washington Conference in 1864 and, in 1867, purchased the church from Trinity for $350.00. The steeple was lost in an 1890 storm but the congregation worshipped here until 1988 when a new Asbury Church was built a mile outside town at Morgan Grove.
New Street Church
New & Church Streets
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
About the time the Mecklenburg Chapel; was abandoned, Methodism came to town through the preaching of Freeborn Garretson and the town was soon part of the Berkeley Circuit. In the summer of 1789 Bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal of an outdoor meeting near the town which attracted 700 people on Saturday and over a thousand on Sunday.
Five years later he returned feeling too sick to preach as he recorded in his Journal “but when I saw the people coming on every side. . .I took my staff, faintly ascended the hill, and held forth on John 1:6-7. After meeting I administered the sacrament and then returned to my bed.”
The log and frame Methodist Church on New Street which was the center of Jefferson Circuit after 1820 and Shepherdstown Circuit after 1840 was destroyed by fire in 1853 and replaced by a new brick church the next year. A crowd described as “old and young, little and big, black and white, bonded and free” came to the dedication of the New Street Church though, at some point, African-Americans built a separate chapel on Rocky Street from which would evolve Asbury Church (see above).
Methodists were split by sectional loyalty after the Civil War. After the church trustees had allowed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South to occupy the church, a court case over the property was decided in favor of the Methodist Episcopal Church [North]. For a time, the preachers appointed by the two denominations even occupied separate parts of the same parsonage.
The Southern church built a separate building at German and King Sts. (now the War Memorial Building) which they occupied until reunification in 1940. The reunited church worshipped in that space while a new facility was built on New Street. The old brick structure was retained and incorporated into the larger brick structure which opened on the old church’s centennial in 1954.
Francis Asbury Church, Bath
Congress & Wilkes Streets
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia
Francis Asbury Church, Trinity-Asbury UMC since merging with the former Trinity United Brethren Church in 2009, has worshipped on this site since 1845 when it replaced the town’s first church, built in 1787 on Independence Street. The first church on this site was replaced in 1890 and has stood here since that time. It was appropriately named for Bishop Asbury, who had first been brought to “the Springs” by Harry Dorsey Gough, Master of Perry Hall, in 1776. The bishop would have a vexed relationship with Bath, finding the waters restorative but their visitors troubling.
Six months after the Christmas Conference of 1784 Bishop Asbury rode from Shepherdstown “to the Springs called Bath; now under great improvement.” Since his ordination, he had ridden to South Carolina and back, calling upon Gen. Washington at Mt. Vernon and breaking ground for Cokesbury College a month earlier. He returned within weeks for the curative waters “called to the exercise of patience” for a week’s rest, during which his spirit was “grieved at so much vanity as is seen here at Bath, by the many poor careless sinners around me.”
Returning to Bath two years later as “my stomach wants all the healing efficacy of the waters to restore it to health,” he was again grieved by his fellow bathers whose “evil was only to be remedied by getting our own preaching house and preaching therein by candlelight.” Such a structure was in progress when he returned the next summer and he “preached the two following days with some satisfaction” and arranged “to have our chapel covered by the first of August.”
That August of 1787 the bishop felt “calm within, and the want of more life and more love to God, and more patience with sinners. I read my Testament. O what weariness would life be without God, and love, and labour. The first two weeks of my time at Bath have been spent in carrying on the building of the new chapel.” The last Sunday of the month the bishop “preached on ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings’ &c (Isaiah 52:7). It was a solemn time – my soul was stayed upon God. We had a melting sacrament and love feast and many spoke.”
This idyll was interrupted, however, when “[Rev. Richard] Whatcoat spoke at the steps, and it was with difficulty the people kept themselves within decent bounds of respect.” This was the year in which John Wesley nominated Whatcoat for bishop, only to be rebuffed by American Conference. Asbury was outraged by Bath’s disrespect, writing of the incident that “the devil is angry and so are his children.”
Days later in Shepherdstown, the bishop wrote that “it is a paradise regained with me since I left Bath and the wicked there.” At Bath the next summer, the bishop received word that both teachers employed at Cokesbury College had left the school. His preaching may have suffered from these “heavy tidings.” He evaluated his own sermon the next Sunday on “the lame and the blind” as being “very ‘lame’; and it may be I left my hearers as I found them, ‘blind’.”
The following year’s respite at Bath led Asbury to declare that “When I behold the conduct of the people who attend the Springs, particularly the gentry, I am led to thank God that I was not born to riches.” It was five years later, 1793, that he again mentioned Bath, “that seat of sin” where “I hope for some relief from my rheumatic complaint which has so oppressed me for six months past. The people here are so gay and idle that I doubt there being much good done among them.” His Journal mentions “the Springs” only in passing after that.
Tour 2.
Western Maryland
coming soon
page under construction
Western Maryland
coming soon
page under construction