The patriarch of one hundred years

My forefathers were from Switzerland. There is romance in their history as well as in the land of their birth. Jacob Boehm, my great-great-grandfather, was a Presbyterian. His s...

The Methodist fathers were self-sacrificing men, who possessed great virtues, and performed heroic deeds. Many of them are now unknown except by their names. Those who knew them...

Great interests cluster around the early Methodist chapels. Boehm’s Chapel is distinguished for its antiquity. It was the first Methodist house of worship built in Lancaster Cou...

The General Conference of 1800 was one of the most remarkable in the history of our Church. The revival at that time was the greatest that has ever occurred during the session o...

We reluctantly bade adieu to our kind friends in Baltimore on Saturday, May 24, 1800, and started for Duck Creek (now called Smyrna) Cross Roads, the seat of the Philadelphia Co...

In January, 1800, I began my regular itinerant life. It was on Dorchester Circuit, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in Philadelphia Conference. The peninsula that lies between...

Bishops Asbury and Whatcoat visited my circuit previous to the Conference of 1801, which was held in Philadelphia. We had then but two houses of worship in that city, St. George...

During the interval between the Baltimore and the Philadelphia Conference Bishops Asbury and Whatcoat spent some time on the Peninsula. They visited my circuit, and I had the ho...

The Philadelphia Conference met at Duck Creek Cross Roads, now Smyrna, in May, 1803, in the meeting-house of the Friends, so that we could have our own to preach in. This we did...

Bishops Asbury and Whatcoat visited my circuit on the 18th of July. Bishop Whatcoat preached in Bristol, and Bishop Asbury in Burlington; after which I rode with the bishops to...

This circuit was very large, and the people were mostly Germans. We had thirty appointments, and at twenty of them we preached in German. Under the first sermon I preached in Ge...

Having a little ecclesiastical business, I attended the Baltimore Conference in Winchester, Va., on April 1, 1805. I was at Winchester in 1800 with my father, and in 1805 I was...

The introduction of camp-meetings into the Peninsula formed a new era in Methodism in that section of country. Worshiping in the groves, God’s first temples, was a novelty, and...

On Saturday, August 12, I went with Bishop Asbury to Philadelphia. He preached twice on Sabbath. In the morning at St. George’s, from 2 Peter i, 12-14. If the reader will turn t...

It is now almost impossible to realize what great times we had at our early camp-meetings. They did much in breaking up the strongholds of the devil, and almost revolutionized t...

Bishop Asbury preached the funeral sermon of Bishop Whatcoat April 29, 1807, and the same evening in Dover I preached my farewell sermon. My heart was deeply affected on parting...

There are but few who know that the Methodist Discipline was translated into German fifty-seven years ago, and I am the only man living who knows all about it: by whom it was tr...

The Philadelphia Conference met this year in the city of brotherly love, on March 20. It was like one great love-feast from beginning to end. The preaching was of a high order,...

Bishop Asbury had a number of traveling companions: Edward Bailey, Hope Hull, Nicholas Snethen, Sylvester Hutchinson, Thomas Morrell, Jesse Lee, Daniel Hitt, Joseph Crawford, an...

The next day after the Western Conference adjourned the two bishops and myself started for the South Carolina Conference, which was to meet in Liberty Chapel, Green County, Geor...

On Monday, January 2, 1809, we left for the Virginia Conference. In crossing Cashaway Ferry we just escaped drowning. It was most providential. We were oft in perils on the land...

On Monday, May 7, 1809, we left Newark for New York. Crossing the beautiful Passaic river, and then the Hackensack, we passed a singular elevation called Snake Hill, and then th...

The relation of my first annual tour with Asbury has convinced the reader that the office of a bishop was then no sinecure, and that his traveling companion had something more t...

Again we turn our faces toward the North. The first night we were the guests of a brother of Bishop M’Kendree, who was overjoyed to see us, and treated us in a friendly manner.

On Monday we left Pittsfield (the most beautiful inland town in the United States) for Winchester, New Hampshire, the seat of the New England Conference. We went over the perpet...

After an absence of months I remained at home one day and two nights, and the bishop said, “Henry, we must move.” My father and sister and many others went with us to Lancaster,...

On Tuesday, October 9, we rode to Winchester, capital of Clarke County, Ky., and were the guests of Leroy Cole. The history of this brother is a peculiar one. He became a travel...

We left Columbia for Charleston on Saturday, December 30, accompanied by that noble man of God, Lewis Myers. We reached General Rumph’s, on the Orangeburgh District, where we sp...

For many years Bishop Asbury had an ardent desire to visit Canada. I was with the bishop in July, 1809, near Lake Champlain, where he ordained “Joseph Sampson, a native of Canad...

On Tuesday, August 20, we took out solemn leave of my dear aged parents and friends. O how my heart was pierced with hearing my father say, as the tears ran down his furrowed ch...

A short time before the conference closed at Leesburgh Bishop Asbury said to me, “Henry, as soon as conference adjourns you must have the horses ready and we must go right to yo...

“The United Brethren in Christ” have often been confounded with the Moravians. They had gone by the name of “United Brethren” ever since Mr. Otterbein took my father in his arms...

I will now resume my narrative. Notwithstanding the recent death of my father, and the loneliness of my widowed mother, three days was all the time we could spend at the old hom...

At the close of the General Conference Mr. Asbury and I left for Albany. On the way we made Governor Van Cortland a visit at Croton. I wrote: “We found the aged father in the po...

On Monday, August 17, we started on the last tour I made with the bishop. The next Monday we went to Pipe Creek and attended a camp-meeting there. Then we started West, and the...

The office of presiding elder was new to me, and I felt my responsibility. Philadelphia, Wilmington, and seven circuits composed my district. Several of the circuits I had previ...

The conference met in Philadelphia on April 20, 1815. Bishop Asbury was so exceedingly ill that the laboring oar fell upon Bishop M’Kendree. Bishop Asbury visited the conference...

The conference which was held in Philadelphia April 18, 1816, was a gloomy one. There was no bishop to preside, Asbury being dead, and M’Kendree sick. During this conference Eze...

As I traveled with Bishop Asbury longer than any other man, and knew him more intimately than any who survive, it will be expected that I notice his character and habits more fu...

During the summer of 1816 I held several camp-meetings that were greatly honored of God. The fourth was in Hillsborough, Maryland. It commenced the 22d of August. Jesse Lee prea...

It was my privilege to take short tours with other bishops besides Asbury. Bishop M’Kendree was always a great friend of mine, and at his request I went with him several times t...

In 1819 our conference commenced its session in Philadelphia on the 19th of April. Bishop Roberts presided. Bishop M’Kendree was too ill to attend. During the session Bishop Rob...

Many years had passed away since I had seen the home of my childhood, and my advanced age admonish me that I must do so soon or never. On February 15, 1856, I left my home on St...

Father Boehm’s valuable life has been marvelously prolonged to such a very old age that he is now regarded every-where, in Europe and America, as the patriarch of Methodism, and...

The following description of the celebration of Father Boehm’s entrance upon his one hundredth year appeared in the _Christian Advocate_, and was copied into many religious jour...

Although Father Boehm had not quite completed his one hundredth year at the time of the annual session of the Newark Conference, in the spring of 1875, the members of the Confer...

On Tuesday, June 8, 1875, Father Boehm completed the one hundredth year of his age. The event was publicly celebrated on that day in the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Jers...

On the morning of Sunday, June 27, 1875, Father Boehm preached his centennial sermon in the Methodist Episcopal Church in John-street. It was a notable event, and among the cong...