Albright, Jacob (01 May 1759–18 May 1808), founder of the Evangelical Association, a denomination now constitutive of the United Methodist church, was born near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in Montgomery County, the son of John Albright (German spelling Albrecht); his mother’s identity is unknown. The Albrecht family were German-speaking Lutherans, and Albright was baptized and confirmed. His schooling was rudimentary. He served in the Revolution and lost a brother to the American cause. In 1785 he married Catherine Cope. They settled in Lancaster County, where Albright established a brick and tile business, a trade that he pursued even after taking up the ministry and that earned him a reputation as the “Honest Tilemaker.”...
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Albright, Jacob (1759-1808), founder of the Evangelical Association, a denomination now constitutive of the United Methodist church
Russell E. Richey
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Inskip, John Swanel (1816-1884), Methodist Episcopal clergyman and evangelist
Charles Yrigoyen Jr.
Inskip, John Swanel (10 August 1816–07 March 1884), Methodist Episcopal clergyman and evangelist, was born in Huntingdon, England, the son of Edward Inskip, a businessman, and Martha Swanel. The family immigrated to the United States in 1820 and settled in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1832 the family moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania....
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Jones, Samuel Porter (1847-1906), evangelist
Robert R. Mathisen
Jones, Samuel Porter (16 October 1847–15 October 1906), evangelist, was born in Chambers County, Alabama, the son of John J. Jones, a successful lawyer and businessman, and Nancy Porter. His father’s family had a long tradition of producing Methodist preachers. Both his great-grandfather and his grandfather had entered the ministry, and his father also felt called to the ministry but never was convinced that it offered enough financial security. Sam Jones’s mother had an equally significant religious influence on him. “My mother was a painstaking, sweet-spirited, Christian woman,” he later wrote. Jones’s mother died when he was nine years old, and about four years later John Jones married Jennie Skinner of Cartersville, Georgia, and moved the family there in 1859. Like Nancy Jones before her, the new stepmother also “did all she could in instilling the principles of virtue and right” in the hearts of Jones and his three siblings....
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Maffitt, John Newland (1794-1850), Methodist preacher
Robert E. Cray
Maffitt, John Newland (28 December 1794–28 May 1850), Methodist preacher, was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a middle-class family that belonged to the Church of Ireland, a branch of the Anglican church. Information about Maffitt’s family background and early life is decidedly spotty: his parents’ names are unknown, although we do know that his father died when Maffitt was twelve and that his mother shortly thereafter attempted to establish him in a mercantile establishment devoted to tailoring. One account claims he graduated from Trinity College. The teenage Maffitt indulged a love of reading novels and historical romances, however, until a conversion experience in a Methodist meeting at age eighteen or nineteen—accounts conflict on this score—convinced him to become a preacher. The Irish Methodist church did not recognize him as a licensed preacher, and his sporadic attempts at evangelical work both in and beyond Dublin were a mixed success at best. Even so, he displayed a highly melodramatic style, which would personify his later career in the United States. He married Ann Carnic at age twenty. They had seven children; the oldest son, ...
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Nast, William (1807-1899), Methodist clergyman and editor
Henry Warner Bowden
Nast, William (15 January 1807–16 May 1899), Methodist clergyman and editor, was born in Stuttgart, Württemberg (now Germany), the son of Elizabeth Magdalene Ludovika Böhm and Johann Wilhelm Nast, merchants. He was baptized in the Lutheran church five days after birth, receiving his father’s full name, but most historical references have Anglicized his name to William. Orphaned at the age of seventeen, he lived with his eldest sister, who had married a theologian, and it was assumed that he would pursue a ministerial career. After attending schools in Stuttgart and Baihingen-an-der-Enz, Nast began seminary studies in 1821 in Blaubueren. Up to that point he had been strongly influenced by German Pietists and periodically experienced a deep sense of sin together with strong hopes for salvation. At the seminary, however, influences of a rationalistic, skeptical sort awaited him in the form of his roommate, David Friedrich Strauss. Wrestling with unresolved tensions between faith and reason, Nast turned away from the ministry and for a time (1825–1827) studied at the University of Tübingen. Thereafter, on the advice of his brother-in-law, he sought relief by traveling to the New World for a change of scene....
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Taylor, William (1821-1902), evangelist and missionary bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church
Charles Yrigoyen Jr.
Taylor, William (02 May 1821–18 May 1902), evangelist and missionary bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church, was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the son of Stuart Taylor, a farmer and tanner, and Martha E. Hickman, a cloth maker. Soon after their marriage, the Taylors joined the Presbyterian church but came under the influence of Methodist preaching and, with William, the first of eleven children, joined the Methodist Episcopal church in 1832. Attending a camp meeting on 28 August 1841, William underwent a transforming religious experience. The following year, while teaching school, he felt a call to enter the ministry and was sent to assist on the Franklin Circuit. A year later he was admitted on trial to the Baltimore Conference and ordained deacon in 1846 and elder in 1847. Between 1843 and 1849 he served pastorates at Deerfield, Fincastle, and Covington, Virginia; Georgetown, D.C.; and North Baltimore, Maryland. In October 1846 he married Annie Kimberlin; they had seven children....
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Webb, Thomas (1725-1796), soldier and Methodist evangelist
Frank Baker
Webb, Thomas (31 May 1725–20 December 1796), soldier and Methodist evangelist, was born in England. Little is known of his parentage or youth. On 29 October 1754 he was commissioned quartermaster in the Forty-eighth Regiment of Foot in the British army and was promoted to lieutenant on 9 November 1755. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) the regiment went to North America to stem the advance of the French. He served under General James Wolfe in the siege of Louisburg (1758) but was severely wounded in the devastating French victory at Montmorency on 31 July 1759. All that he recollected was a flash of light as a musket ball destroyed his right eye, though later he was apt to embellish his account a little. That winter he prepared a slight ...
