History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

1 Lee's "History," p.56.
ENDNOTES
2 Stevens invariably speaks of it as "Brockenback," but assigns no reason for it. Perhaps
typographical.
3 "History of the Rise of Methodism in America from 1736 to 1785," 434 pp. l2mo. Cloth. 1859. By
John Lednum, of the Philadelphia Conference. A copy in the Congressional Library, Washington,
D. C. On page 210 he freely criticizes Asbury's conduct for this hiding at Judge White's. Indeed,
despite all that has been said to extenuate it, nothing is satisfactory but the fact that at this time, and
for some years after, he was a thorough English Tory. Yet as late as 1885, Bishop Harris, of the M.
E. Church, avers as though there was no room for question — "Mr. Asbury, who warmly espoused
the cause of the colonies, and identified his fortunes with his flock in the wilderness." It is in this
way that history is manufactured and falsified. See page 9, "The Relation of the Episcopacy to the
General Conference," by the late Bishop W. L. Harris, D.D., LL.D. New York, Hunt & Eaton, 1888.
l2mo. 96 pp. Cloth.
4 Guirey states that from 1776 to 1780 not a few of the deeds of American Methodist chapels were
destroyed to prevent seizure by the Revolutionists as British property. He gives Adam Cloud of the
early itinerants as his authority. See p. 269.
5 In the Methodist Protestant of May 22, 1847, there is a reprint of a letter addressed to W. L.
Mackensie, Esq., of New York, under date of June 21, 1844, from General George C. Dromgoole,
of Virginia, a son of Rev. Edward Dromgoole, who was born in Ireland, located, after emigration
to this country, in Philadelphia, converted under the earliest Methodist preaching, and in 1774
became leader of the first class ever organized in America. He subsequently united with the
Methodists as an itinerant, labored principally in Virginia, and finally settled in Brunswick County,
where he died in 1835 in the eighty-fourth year of his age. In the beginning of the Revolutionary
War, he promptly took the oath of allegiance before his friend, Robert Jones, magistrate in Sussex
County, Va., and ever afterward carried with him a certificate of the fact, so that he traveled
wherever he wished entirely unmolested by the American patrol. When the Declaration of
Independence was made he read the instrument from the court-house steps to a large company in
Halifax County, Va., and exhibited his attachment to his adopted country in every proper way. It was
in broad contrast with the course of Bishop Asbury, who refused to take the oath, and in consequence
felt it expedient to retire into seclusion at his friend's, Judge White, who was also a Tory. Dr.
Atkinson, in his "Centennial History of Methodism," feels called upon to rebut the statement that
Edward Dromgoole united in his old age with the Reformers of 1827-30, and adduces a letter from
one of his sons to this effect. It is, no doubt, technically correct that he never withdrew from the old
Church, but there is evidence that he attended and preached at a Reform campmeeting in Virginia,
and that a son was a minister of the new Church, two conditions which can be accounted for on the
supposition only that his sympathies were with the Reformers.