I am abroad seeking after the lost sheep?" His neighbors, appreciating his generous zeal and selfsacrifice, agreed to take care of his little farm, gratuitously, in his absence. The Sam's Creek Society, consisting at first of but twelve or fifteen persons, was a fountain of good influence to the county and the state. It early gave four or five preachers to the itinerancy. Strawbridge founded Methodism in Baltimore and Harford counties. The first Society in the former was formed by him at the house of Daniel Evans, near the city, and the first chapel of the county was erected by it. The first native Methodist preacher of the continent, Richard Owen, was one of his converts in this county; a man who labored faithfully and successfully as a local preacher for some years, and who entered the itinerancy at last, and died in it. He was long the most effective co-laborer of Strawbridge, traveling the country in all directions, founding societies, and opening the way for the coming itinerants. Owen's temperament was congenial with that of Strawbridge. He clung to the hearty Irishman with tenacious affection, emulated his missionary activity, and at last followed him to the grave, preaching his funeral service to a "vast concourse," under a large walnut tree.

Several preachers were rapidly raised up by Strawbridge in his travels in Baltimore and Harford coun

ties: Sater Stephenson, Nathan Perigo, Richard Webster, and others; and many laymen, whose families have been identified with the whole subsequent progress of Methodism in their respective localities, if not the nation generally. We have frequent intimations of his labors and success in the early biographies of Methodism, but they are too vague to admit of any consecutive narration of his useful career. We discover him now penetrating into Pennsylvania, and then arousing the population of the Eastern Shore of Maryland; now bearing the standard into Baltimore, and then, with Owen, planting it successfully in Georgetown, on the Potomac, and in other places in Fairfax county, Virginia; and by the time that the regular itinerancy comes effectively into operation in Maryland, a band of preachers, headed by such men as Watters, Gatch, Bowham, Haggerty, Durbin, Garrettson, seem to have been prepared, directly or indirectly, through his instrumentality, for the more methodical prosecution of the great cause. We find his own name in the Minutes in 1773 and 1775 as an itinerant. We trace him at last to the upper part of Long Green, Baltimore county, where an opulent and generous public citizen, Captain Charles Ridgely, who admired his character and sympathized with his poverty, gave him a farm, free of rent, for life. It was while residing here, "under the shadow of Hampton," his

benefactor's mansion, that, in "one of his visiting rounds to his spiritual children, he was taken sick at the house of Joseph Wheeler, and died in great peace;" probably in the summer of 1781. Owen, as has been remarked, preached his funeral sermon in the open air, to a great throng, "under a tree at the north-west corner of the house." Among the concourse were a number of his old Christian neighbors, worshipers in the "Log Chapel," to whom he had been a Pastor in the wilderness; they bore him to the tomb, singing as they marched one of those rapturous lyrics with which Charles Wesley taught the primitive Methodists to triumph over the grave. He sleeps in an orchard of the friend at whose house he died-one of his own converts-under a tree, from the foot of which can be seen the great city which claims him as its Methodistic apostle, and which, ever since his day, has been pre-eminent among American communities for its Methodistic strength and zeal.

6

CHAPTER III.

EARLY EVANGELISTS AND MISSIONARIES.

THE news of the success of Embury, Webb, and Strawbridge reached England and excited no little interest. Wesley was pondering the expediency of sending out missionaries to enter the opening doors; but meanwhile some zealous evangelists, impatient of delay, hastened as volunteers to the new field. The first of them was Robert Williams, a local preacher, who went on board the packet for America, with his saddle-bags, a bottle of milk, and a loaf of bread, but no money for the expense of the voyage. A Methodist fellow-passenger paid the latter. On arriving in New York (1769) Williams immediately began his mission in Embury's Chapel, and thenceforward, for about six years, was one of the most effective pioneers of American Methodism: "the first Methodist minister in America that published a book, the first that married, the first that located, and the first that died." We have but little knowledge of his career, but sufficient to prove that he had the fire and heroism of the original itinerancy. He was stationed at Johnstreet Church some time in 1771. He labored successfully with Strawbridge in founding the new cause