Philip Embury

Before John Street

Philip Embury is John Street’s first preacher. He was born in Ireland in 1729. Embury was converted on Christmas Day, 1752. He became active in the Methodist movement and John Wesley approved him as a class leader and local preacher. In 1760, he immigrated to New York with his wife Margaret and other Irish Palatines, including Barbara and Paul Heck.

Embury worked as a carpenter and a tutor and was considered a "honest, industrious, sober, and obliging man." In 1766, Barbara Heck insisted that Embury should preach again, as he had in Ireland. He protested that "I cannot preach, for I have neither a house nor congregation." Heck had a solution: Embury could preach in his own home and she would gather a congregation.

“Preach in your own house and to your own company.”

On October 12, 1766, six people gathered in the Embury home, including Philip himself for the Methodist society's first meeting. Soon the small gathering would grow and require more space, eventually finding a place to meet at a rigging loft. Here Embury's carpentry skills came in handy, he built a pulpit for the congregation’s meetings. It now resides at the John Street United Methodist Church. Before long, even the rigging loft became overcrowded.

“Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”
— Hosea 10:12

In early 1768, the congregation decided to purchase land and build a Methodist preaching house. At this point the society had only been meeting for slightly more than a year. Philip Embury was more than the community's first preacher at this point. He is thought to have been responsible for much of the planning and construction of the preaching house, later called "Wesley Chapel," which was dedicated on October 30, 1768. Embury preached the sermon on that occasion, selecting Hosea 10:12 as the text.

The Embury and Hecks and others in their family left New York City for Camden Valley, New York. Here he would establish another Methodist society. In August 1775, Philip Embury died in a farming accident. There is a monument to him in Woodland Cemetery in Cambridge, New York.

A biography for young readers by Rev. Stefanie Bennett