EDWIN SCHELL | By Edwin Schell As the Baltimore-Washington Conference prepares to meet next month in Baltimore, this column will include highlights of Methodism since it began in this historic area. 1854 - New burial sites of Bishops Asbury, George and Emory were marked in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore.
1856 - General Conference divided Baltimore Conference along an east-west line. Northern Maryland and Pennsylvania became East Baltimore, which left Baltimore slave territory in Maryland, Virginia and part of Baltimore City.
1858 - Otterbein Church in Baltimore erected an English-speaking chapel on Scott Street.
1860 - General Conference enacted a 'New Chapter,' which required ouster of slaveholding members, precipitating a huge controversy in the Baltimore Conference.
1861 - Baltimore Conference members forced Bishop Scott from office and disowned the 1860 General Conference action on slaveholding. The action would have perhaps lost the conference to the Southern Church had not the Civil War soon erupted.
1864 - Washington Conference organized with 21 black pastors to minister in Maryland and the District of Columbia.
1866 - North-South Methodist rivalries led to church property cases in Montgomery and St. Mary's Counties, with Methodist Episcopal church ownership affirmed.
The Rev. Edwin Schell is the executive director of the United Methodist Historical Society. |
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