Barbara Heck

Before John Street

Barbara Heck, the "Mother of American Methodism," was born in Ireland in 1734 and immigrated to colonial New York in 1760, with her extended family. She had participated in the Methodist movement in Ireland, but while attempting to establish a life in New York, she seems to have fallen away from the practice.

Then one day she discovered some friends and family playing cards. She was so dismayed at their behavior that she threw the cards into the fire and marched off to find Philip Embury, insisting that he needed to preach to them or their souls were at risk. It was Barbara who gathered the first congregation, of six people, for a service at the Embury home.

“I, the Lord, will do it.”

Soon the Methodist society grew and needed new places to meet. In a little over a year there was talk of building a proper Methodist preaching house, the first in America. Barbara Heck would be instrumental in the bold decision to buy property on John Street and build. In prayer over the question Heck received an answer “I, the Lord. will do it.” The property on John Street was secured and the preaching house built. A United Methodist congregation still worships there today.

Heck and her family, along with the Embury’s and others left the city first settling in Camden Valley, moving further North as the American Revolution began. The Hecks finally settled in Augusta, Canada where they formed the earliest Methodist society in Canada.

A biography for young readers by Rev. Stefanie Bennett