Hidden History: Freeborn Garrettson Preached at Sudlersville’s Dudley’s Chapel

One of the first American-born Methodist preachers and a spirited abolitionist, Freeborn Garrettson was born into a wealthy Harford County family in 1752. He entered the ministry at age 23, and by 1776, he was one of Francis Asbury’s (“the father of American Methodism”) traveling itinerants, or circuit riders. Garrettson’s evangelical travels on horseback were so extensive that he was called Methodism’s Paul Revere.  

Soon after inheriting his father’s estate at age 21, Garrettson freed the enslaved people held there. His subsequent anti-slavery sermons led to imprisonment at least once in Maryland. We know he was jailed in Cambridge in 1780 for preaching without a license. There, it is said, he preached through the jail window and the townspeople fed him. Indeed, Garrettson was an inspirational figure, influencing many enslavers in the Delmarva area and elsewhere to emancipate numerous people.

In his circuit riding travels, Freeborn Garrettson preached at Dudley’s Chapel, built in 1783 as Queen Anne’s Chapel. The Queen Anne’s Methodist Society, organized in 1774, was responsible for establishing the chapel. During this time (and up to 1865, when African Americans were told to worship elsewhere),  enslaved people were seated separately in the church’s gallery.

Garrettson was ordained a Methodist elder at the 1784 Methodist conference in Baltimore. In the late 1780s, he moved to New York.  His 1810 pamphlet, “A Dialogue Between Do-Justice and Professing Christian” argued that the institution of slavery did not align with Christianity. Although an ardent abolitionist for more than 50 years, Garrettson did not live to see the end of slavery. He died in New York in 1827.

Dudley’s Chapel and cemetery is located at 1100 Benton Corner Road in Sudlersville, Maryland. The chapel is open for tours the first Saturday of each month 10:00 am – 2:00 pm May – Oct beginning Saturday, May 3.  Email [email protected] or call 410-604-2100 for more information.

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