Philip Embury

In the late 1600's Louis XIV tried to stamp out Protestantism in the Palatinate (on the Rhine), sending thousands of people fleeing to England, Ireland, and America. Philip Embury was born in 1728 or 1729, either in the Palatinate or in Ireland, where his family settled in County Limerick. He was apprenticed to a carpenter and became skillful in the craft. On Christmas Day in 1752 he became a Christian and about that time first heard John Wesley. In 1758 he began preaching and also married Mary Switzer. In 1760 they left Ireland for New York.

Most of his fellow immigrants soon fell away and he became discouraged and stopped preaching until 1766, when his cousin Barbara Heck, outraged at a card game she found being held in her home, implored him to resume and brought four persons to hear him at his home. In 1767 they were visited by an army officer, Captain Thomas Webb, who had been authorized by Wesley to preach and soon joined them, preaching in uniform with his sword lying on the desk before him. This attracted so many people they had to rent a rigging loft, where Embury and Webb preached to crowds three times a week. Barbara Heck had been praying for a meeting house, and drew up plans which were approved by the Society. They leased a site on John Street in 1768 and bought it in 1770. A stone faced chapel was built on the site, with Webb contributing generously to the financing and Embury doing much of the carpentry work, including constructing the pulpit. Within three years at least 1000 hearers were crowding the Wesley Chapel, though it remained unfinished inside for a long time.

Philip Embury was seldom paid but continued to minister faithfully until Wesley's first missionaries arrived in New York City in 1769. Not long afterward he retired to the Camden Valley of Shushan, NY, where he continued to preach and founded a society at Ashgrove, east of Cambridge, (where he also owned land). In 1775, while mowing a field, he was injured and died suddenly.

He was first buried in Camden on Peter Switzer's farm, but in 1832 was disinterred and moved to Ashgrove where his church was. In 1866 his remains were moved again to Woodlands Cemetery in Cambridge, where you can find his grave today.

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