“This Very Wicked Place”
This was how 18th Century Methodist missionary Francis Asbury allegedly described Chestertown in Kent County, but my search to document his remark was trying.
Why would Asbury call a late 1700s town “this very wicked place”? His own story holds some clues.
Francis Asbury was born in Staffordshire, England, in 1745 to Elizabeth and Joseph Asbury. His mother was influenced by the early Methodist movement in England, and his father allowed weekly Methodist meetings to be held in their cottage. Asbury himself was deeply influenced by their strong Methodist convictions, especially his mother’s. Growing up during the Industrial Revolution, he saw the terrible conditions for factory and mine workers in Birmingham, and also saw how those conditions and deep poverty drove many workers to drink and gamble.
He brought this experience to America, and during his travels on the Eastern Shore and in Delaware, he saw the same vices — excessive drinking and gambling, primarily on horse races.
At a young age, Asbury began preaching as part of the Methodist movement. When he was 22, John Wesley selected him to be a traveling lay preacher. In 1771, he volunteered to go to America, where he preached his first sermon on Staten Island. Within a few days, he had preached in New York and Philadelphia.
Asbury became part of the Second Great Awakening of religious fervor in colonial America. When the American Revolution began in 1775, he was one of only two British Methodist lay ministers still in America.
Although Asbury spent much of his ministry on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and in Delaware, moving continuously throughout the area, his decades-long itinerant ministry included much time in Philadelphia, as far west as Frederick in Maryland, and south in Virginia and North Carolina. During those years, he kept a journal, part of which is available online.
Asbury’s journal included many references to the Eastern Shore and Delaware, ending with his unfortunate characterization of Chestertown. Volume 1 of the journal covers the years 1771-1786.
In his travels on the Eastern Shore, Asbury visited the small town of Quantico, then in Somerset County, now in Wicomico. His judgement on that community in his journal is brief: “I rode to Quantico, and found no want of anything there, but religion.”
A similar judgement is pronounced on Delaware: “We have a society of more than 20 members, some of whom have found the Lord; but I think, for ignorance of God and religion, the wilds and swamps of Delaware exceed most parts of America with which I have had any acquaintance: however, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
Asbury was more positive about Talbot County: “We had about 500 people at the Bay side. I find the prejudices of the people in Talbot grow weaker; and there is some revival of religion among them.”
Of his experience in Salisbury, he had the following to say: “Rode to Salisbury, where, as it was court-time, I had but few hearers; and some of these made their escape when I began to insist on the necessity of holiness; a subject which the antinomians do not like to hear pressed too closely.” I am inclined to believe he was being ironic here, since antinomian refers to those who believe that by Divine Grace, Christians are freed from obeying biblical law and church-prescribed behavioral norms.
I had almost given up on finding Asbury’s reference to Chestertown’s wickedness, as I had not been able to find Volumes 2 or 3 of his journal, but then I stumbled upon this from Hubert Footner’s Rivers of the Eastern Shore:
“Chestertown always had a spendthrift reputation, and this naturally reached its height during the lavish generation preceding the Revolution. Gaming, dancing, and horse racing had long been features, and theatrical performances when they could be had. Smuggling was rife; Bordeaux wines were cheap and plentiful; Antigua rums, Martinique cordials, and Schiedam schnapps were on most sideboards.”
“The young men were stalwart dandies. They chased the fox through brake and briar, or stood up to their waists in water during November, bringing down canvasbacks with their long ducking guns. Royal suppers of wild duck and hominy followed, with rum punch and old Madeira from the wood; then long pipes and cards before a blazing fire …. The Reverend Francis Asbury, the famous traveling preacher, entered this in his journal: ‘Sunday 9th: I preached at night in Chestertown. I always have an enlargement in preaching in this very wicked place.’”
A Maryland Historical Trust Historic Sites Inventory Form maintains that Asbury’s visit and journal entry occurred in 1785, and working backward, I was able to finally find the quote on October 9, 1785, on p.397 of Volume 1 of Asbury’s journal.
Having heard of Asbury’s statement for many years, I was pleased to see that I had not made the whole thing up!
A native of Wicomico County, George Shivers holds a doctorate from the University of Maryland and taught in the Foreign Language Dept. of Washington College for 38 years before retiring in 2007. He is also very interested in the history and culture of the Eastern Shore, African American history in particular.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
