19 Facts About Freeborn Garrettson

Freeborn Garrettson was an American clergyman, and one of the first American-born Methodist preachers.

Freeborn Garrettson entered the Methodist ministry in 1775 and travelled extensively to evangelize in several states.

The Garrettson family owned a large amount of land which included a farm, a general store, and a blacksmith shop.

The Freeborn Garrettson estate was a prosperous property made more valuable by the numerous slave families who ran the various businesses of the estate.

Freeborn Garrettson later inherited his parents' plantation and a large number of slaves.

Yes, Freeborn Garrettson expressed hearing an audible voice in each of these instances.

Not long after Freeborn Garrettson inherited several slaves, he freed them.

Freeborn Garrettson wrote that a "voice" moved him to do so.

Freeborn Garrettson's journals divulge an anti-slavery stance, but do not reveal the extent of his activism.

Freeborn Garrettson's preaching against slavery resulted in his being thrown in jail in Cambridge, Maryland.

Freeborn Garrettson traveled so often and so regularly in the service of Methodism that some came to call him the Methodist Paul Revere.

In 1784, Freeborn Garrettson went as a missionary to Nova Scotia, which led to the founding of Methodist congregations in Cape Negro and the free black settlement of Birchtown, Nova Scotia.

Freeborn Garrettson followed in the wake of Henry Alline and focused much of his work on the areas where Alline had previously spread Methodism.

Freeborn Garrettson ranged widely throughout Nova Scotia and preached in almost every settlement in the colony.

Freeborn Garrettson held the first Methodist church services in the Benner House on Mill Street.

Freeborn Garrettson married Catherine Livingston in 1793, and they had one daughter.

Freeborn Garrettson was ordained a Methodist elder at the 1784 conference in Baltimore where the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized.

Freeborn Garrettson was a firm supporter of centralized control of the Church.

Freeborn Garrettson died at his estate, Wildercliff, in the village of Rhinebeck, on September 26,1827.