Wesley UMC - History - Early Beginnings

1765-1852

Barbara Heck (a woman of piety, persistence, and genius for affairs) and her husband were among a party of emigrants to America, which sailed from Limerick in 1760 to New York. In 1765, another vessel arrived bringing relatives and friends of the first group. On one of Mrs. Heck's visits to the newcomers, she found them playing cards, and this awakened her to a sense of danger that threatened them in their new homes. She was thoroughly alarmed—if the new people were falling into careless and wicked ways, what was to prevent them from all becoming backsliders.

philip_embury.jpg (9345 bytes) There were a few Methodists within her acquaintance and she felt they must be gathered into a Society, just as they had in Balligarrane in Ireland. Her cousin, Philip Embury, was a licensed preacher. She felt that he must open the Bible and preach! After much argument and urging, she convinced her cousin to take up his cross and preach again.

When he consented, she hastily went out and brought in five or six of their neighbors, and in 1766—10 years before the birth of the United States—Philip Embury preached the first Methodist sermon in America.

This is the event that has been given official recognition by the Methodist Church. Even though John Wesley came to America many years earlier, most historians agree that Wesley came before his conversion and was representing the Anglican Church.

Early Methodism in Minnesota

red_rock.jpg (15643 bytes) In 1837, Alfred Brunson; David King, a missionary; John Holton, a farmer; and John Thompson, a black man who acted as interpreter, established the first Methodist Mission in Minnesota at Kaposia. Kaposia was Chief Little Crow's Village and was located at what is now South St. Paul. When Alfred Brunson retired in 1939, the Reverend Benjamin Kavanaugh took his place and moved part of the mission to Red Rock, where he build a two-story log cabin. The lower floor was used as a school for whites and half breeds who could not attend the mission in Kaposia because it was in Indian territory.

In 1849, while visiting at the Falls of St. Anthony, Rev. Matthew Sorin, a preacher belonging to the Philadelphia Conference, organized the few Methodists who were living there into a class. The St. Anthony settlement was located on the east and north side of the river in what later became the north east part of Minneapolis. The class grew and in 1852, they began building the St. Anthony Methodist Episcopal Church on Third Street in St. Anthony Falls. 10 or 12 people transferred from the St. Anthony ME Church in 1857 and 1858 when the Minneapolis Methodist Episcopal Church (The Little White Church) was built. Therefore, the St. Anthony ME Church is considered a direct ancestor of Wesley Church. (Learn more in the Wesley Genealogy)

First Class on the West Side

However, the chain of events leading to Wesley Church started with Rev. Godfrey's class on the West Side. In 1852, Rev. Alfred C. Godfrey, brother of Ard Godfrey who was superintendent of the saw mill on the east side, organized another class. This class was the origin of the Centenary, Hennepin, and Wesley Churches and was held at Rev. Godfrey's home, about half-way between Washington Avenue and the river near Fourth Avenue South.

The St. Anthony Express had the following item on Friday, September 17, 1852:

Methodist preaching on the west side of the river next Sabbath at 10 ½ o'clock at the home of Rev. Mr. Godfrey.

These Methodists predate the first paper printed on the west side (1854) and the City of Minneapolis (1856). In November 1852, the Presiding Elder, Chauncey Hobart, held the first Quarterly Meeting for the St. Peter's Mission, which included the St. Anthony area, Shakopee, Fort Snelling, Kaposia, and Cottage Grove at the house of Brother Godfrey. Brother Hobart preached to a congregation of "twenty-five souls."

As the class grew, they moved to various locations that could provide space. In about 1854 the class move to Fletcher's Hall on First Avenue near where the new Federal Reserve Building now stands. Mrs. C. Godfrey remembers these meetings as printed in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune on April 4, 1915.

When we came they were holding services in Fletcher's Hall. I remember how it impressed me at first, for we had come from a good-sized New England town, where the churches were very different from that bare little hall with the hard wooden benches. And my little girl mind was shocked at the sight of men who took up the collection. Back East, they had always been elderly, and very, very solemn looking, all in black, and made taking up the money a rather mournful duty. The thing that caught my eye was the flowered vests the men wore. They were young men, as all were in those days here, and flowered waistcoats were very popular, so naturally those who had them wore them to church, with heavy chains draped across, and their coats open to show their finery.

[Next - The Little White Church]

Biography Sources: History of Wesley Church, The First 125 Years, Wesley United Methodist Church, 1977.
and the Wesley Archives