After years of itinerant preachers spreading Methodism throughout the region, the Methodist Episcopal Church is the first to be established after the Revolution in the U.S. The Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore is its first building.
The Methodist movement in Maryland begins when Robert Strawbridge arrives from Ireland in 1760. After the first meeting is established in what becomes Carroll County, Strawbridge travels throughout Maryland to spread his faith, and enlists others to assist, including German immigrant Philip Wm. Otterbein.
The Christmas Conference of 1784 establishes the Methodist church, electing Francis Asbury as its first bishop. The Cokesbury Methodist College in Harford County, the first in America, soon follows but is abandoned after a 1795 fire.
Otterbein establishes the United Brethren Church in 1800 for German settlers in western Maryland.
