Asbury UM Church hosting event to celebrate church’s history
Asbury United Methodist Church in Uniontown is hosting an event Wednesday, Sept. 16, that ties into national celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Pastor Ryan Washabaugh will welcome guests at 6 p.m., and Frank Kurtik will make a presentation on the church’s history, concluding with Bert Sesler on the organ. A reception will follow and feature a celebratory cake.
The congregation traces its beginning to the Revolutionary War era, and still has the bell cast in Philadelphia for the congregation’s third building in 1839.
The bell was made by John Wilbank, who was commissioned a decade earlier to make a replacement for the cracked bell of the old State House (now Independence Hall). Wilbank decided the scrap value of the old bell did not make it worth the cost of taking it down, so he left it in the belfry. Besides being a business decision, the German immigrant realized the historical value and said, “I cannot destroy the bell. Your children and my children will someday value it.”
Settlers began arriving in future Fayette County in the 1770s when it was British territory claimed both by the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Itinerant Methodist preachers came through the area at first and then a community was formed around the grist mill built by Henry Beeson called Beeson’s Town, and later Union, then Union Town, and a log church was erected by the Methodists.
Methodists were technically part of the Church of England and after the War for Independence ended in 1783, the newly independent Americans who followed John Wesley’s reforms realized they could not have a church whose Supreme Governor was the King of England. So at a conference held in Baltimore in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal denomination was created. Similarly, the more traditionally minded Anglicans created the Protestant Episcopal denomination.
Francis Asbury was sent from England to America by John Wesley in 1771 to minister to the Methodists in the colonies. He remained during the war and at the Baltimore Conference was ordained a Superintendent (later changed to Bishop) of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Asbury visited Uniontown a number of times and after the present building was completed in 1919, it was given the present name to honor him.
Everyone is invited to the event at the church, located at the comer of South Beeson Avenue and Dunbar Street.