the first Methodist preacher in America
Philip Embury a descendant of German Protestants who fled from the Palatinate under the persecutions of Louis XIV, was probably born in Ballingrane, County of Limerick, Ireland. The date of his birth is approximately fixed by a family record which states that he was baptized on Sept. 29, 1728 (Crook, post, p. 79).
He received some education under Philip Guier, the German village schoolmaster of Ballingrane, and in an English school, possibly at Rathkeale.
Later he was apprenticed to a carpenter.
The date of his birth is approximately fixed by a family record which states that he was baptized on Sept. 29, 1728 (Crook, post, p. 79).
Methodist preaching began in Limerick in 1749, and received a warm response from the Palatines.
Soon he became a class leader and local preacher.
He was recommended for the itinerancy at the conference in Limerick in 1758, and put on Wesley’s reserve list.
On November 27.
In June 1760 he joined a party of emigrants who sailed from Limerick on the ship Perry and arrived in New York. Embury worked at his trade and also apparently taught school, for an announcement in Weyman’s New York Gazette in March and April 1761 states that “Phil.
He joined the Lutheran Church but seems not to have been active in religious matters for some years.
A card game and the righteous wrath of a woman awakened Embury and started the Methodist movement in America.
Mrs. Barbara Heck, in 1766, burst in upon a card party of her countrymen, broke up the game, and then went to Embury’s home and said: “Philip, you must preach to us, or we shall all go to Hell, and God will require our blood at your hands. ”
He preached his first sermon in New York in his own house to a company of five.
The congregation grew, and as a result, Wesley Chapel, the first John Street Church, was built in 1768, Embury working on it as a carpenter, and preaching the dedicatory sermon.
In 1770 he migrated to what is now Washington County, New York, then a part of Albany County, where some of his countrymen from New York City had preceded him.
Here he lived on the farm of his brother-in-law, Peter Switzer, near East Salem, working at his trade, preaching, and acting as civil magistrate.
His death is said to have been caused by over-exertion while mowing under a burning sun.
He was buried on a nearby farm, but in 1832 his remains were removed to the cemetery at Ashgrove, and in 1866 to Woodland Cemetery, Cambridge, New York, where a monument has been erected.
Quotations: On Christmas 1752, Embury states, “the Lord shone into my soul by a glimpse of his redeeming love, being an earnest of my redemption in Christ Jesus” (Ibid, ; Wake- ley, post, p. 33).
At Ashgrove he established a Methodist society, the first north of New York City.
1758, he was married in Rathkeale church to Margaret Switzer of Court Matrix, where the first Methodist church among the Palatines had been erected in part through his exertions.
