Francis Asbury - Namesakes

Namesakes

• Asbury's boyhood home, Bishop Asbury Cottage, in Sandwell, England, is now a museum.
• The first Methodist Episcopal school of higher education was named Cokesbury College (1785 - burned 1796) in honor of Asbury and Thomas Coke, drawing some concern from John Wesley. The name lives on in Cokesbury, part of the United Methodist publishing arm.
• At least five schools have been named after Asbury:
  • Two are in Wilmore, Kentucky: Asbury University and Asbury Theological Seminary.
  • In addition, DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana was originally known as Indiana Asbury College after him.
  • Francis Asbury Elementary School in Hampton, Virginia.
  • Asbury High School, Marshall County, Alabama
• James A. Bradley, a convert to Methodism, named the town he founded on the New Jersey shore, Asbury Park, after Asbury. The Mascot of the Asbury Park High School is "The Bishops."
• The former Asbury Methodist Church on Staten Island (now the Son-Rise Interfaith Center) stands as a monument to his memory.
• In 1796 Bishop Asbury helped lay the cornerstone for the church in Hall's Mills, NJ which shortly changed its name to Asbury (now a village in Franklin Township, Warren County, NJ).
• A statue, Francis Asbury, was erected in Washington, D.C. in 1921.
• A statue of Francis Asbury on horseback was erected at Drew University in Madison, NJ.
• A hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park follows part of the path Asbury took when crossing the mountains in the early 19th century. There is a monument dedicated to Asbury at Shiloh Memorial Cemetery in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where Asbury delivered a sermon on October 20, 1808.
• Stratosphere Balloon Cave in Germany Valley, West Virginia was for over 150 years called "Asbury Cave". (Asbury records his 1781 visit to the cave in his Journal.)
• Many towns and villages bear an Asbury United Methodist Church, including the fourth largest United Methodist Church in the denomination, located in Tulsa, OK (www.asburytulsa.org).
• The first Methodist Church in Northern China, the Asbury Church in Peking, built in 1870 by Rev. Hiram Harrison Lowry, was named after Asbury. Today the church is known as Chongwenmen Church (崇文门教堂).
• Asbury Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, home of Northwestern University, founded by Methodists
• Asbury, Iowa was founded by Methodists.
• Asbury Road and Asbury Avenue in Ocean City NJ, a town founded by Methodists in the late 1870s as a religious summer camp along the mid Atlantic coast was named afer him.