Philip Embury Founds the First American Methodist Society in New York

Twenty eight years after Methodism arose within the Church of England in 1738, and eighteen years before the Christmas Conference established Methodism in America in 1784, both already recorded here, the movement's first American society gathered around a reluctant lay preacher. Philip Embury, an Irish Methodist carpenter who had emigrated to New York City in 1760, had stopped preaching after arriving, until his cousin Barbara Heck found him and other Irish immigrants playing cards and persuaded him to take up his old calling again. In October 1766 Embury preached to six people gathered in his own rented room, the first Methodist meeting held in the American colonies, and the small society soon outgrew his home, meeting next in a rented room on Horse and Cart Street remembered as the Rigging Loft. By 1768 the growing congregation had purchased land on John Street and built Wesley Chapel, the first Methodist meeting house raised in the colonies, the seed from which the Methodist Episcopal Church organized eighteen years later at the Christmas Conference already recorded here would grow.