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By Edwin Schell

As the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference prepares to meet this May in Baltimore for the first time since 1986, this history column will include highlights of Methodism since it began in this historic area.

1814

• In September, Maryland citizen soldiers drove back the British, and Fort McHenry withstood naval bombardment.
• Francis Scott Key wrote 'Star Spangled Banner.'
• Bishop Thomas Coke perished in the Indian Ocean enroute to begin a mission in India. Survivors began the mission in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) instead.

1815

• Bishop Asbury slowly wound his weary way from South Carolina to New York. He held the Baltimore Conference in Light Street, Eutaw Street and Fells Point churches and rested at Perry Hall, his favorite stopping place. Each stop he envisioned as his farewell after a 44-year ministry in the United States.
• Bishop Asbury conferred with Bishop McKendree and preached many Coke memorial sermons.
• In South Carolina on Dec. 7, Asbury wrote his last journal entry.

1816

• Bishop Asbury and his companion, the Rev. John Wesley Bond of Baltimore, traveled slowly toward General Conference in Baltimore.
• The bishop preached his last sermon while lying on a table in Richmond, Va., and died at the Arnold house north of Fredericksburg, Va., March 21.
• When General Conference convened in Baltimore, Asbury's remains were reburied under the pulpit of Eutaw Street Church. Ignoring the huge grieving throng, the newspaper reported only that a preacher had his pocket picked in the crowd. (He lost $400 of Book Concern money.) Asbury was laid to rest under the Eutaw Street pulpit.
• General Conference elected two Baltimore preachers, the Revs. R.R. Roberts and Enoch George, to take up Asbury's work.
• Asbury came to a thousand American Methodists and left a church of 214,000, spread to the ends of the United States with 695 preachers appointed. When he arrived in 1771, there were eight or 10. It is no wonder he is called the 'Prophet of the Long Road.'

The Rev. Edwin Schell is the executive director of the United Methodist Historical Society.