Francis Asbury in South Carolina: Indian Field and Cypress

Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop ordained on American soil, first reached Charleston in February 1785 and came back to South Carolina most winters until his death in 1816. His journal records him preaching at Cypress, near Ridgeville, on a Sunday in 1794, and at Indian Fields, north of St. George, on December 21, 1801, and January 13, 1803. Both places still hold a week of camp meeting every October.

Who was Francis Asbury?

He was born in Staffordshire, England, in August 1745, sailed from near Bristol in September 1771, and landed in Philadelphia that October. When the Methodist Episcopal Church organized itself at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore in 1784, Thomas Coke ordained him a bishop. From then on he rode. Wikipedia puts his average at about 6,000 miles a year, most of it on horseback, most of it to frontier settlements, preaching nearly every day. He preached his last sermon in Richmond on March 24, 1816, and died a week later in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore.

When did Asbury first come to South Carolina?

He set off for Charleston on February 17, 1785, with Jesse Lee and Henry Willis, and rode in through what he called a barren country. On February 28 he wrote that the Calvinists were the only people in Charleston who seemed to have any sense of religion, and that there was “a great dearth of religion here; some say, never more so than at this time.”

He organized churches in Charleston and Georgetown that spring, and at the first South Carolina annual conference in April 1785 he assigned three preachers to circuits, according to the South Carolina Encyclopedia. By 1789 his journal has him setting out from Charleston for the Edisto circuit, riding up the south side of the Ashley River, which is the road through what is now Dorchester County.

What did his journal say about Cypress and Indian Field?

Cypress Methodist Camp Ground sits on S.C. Highway 182 about a mile east of U.S. 78, near Ridgeville, at the Berkeley County line. The National Register nomination for the site quotes Asbury’s journal from 1794: “Sunday 19, Rode to Cypress, where I could not rest without giving them a little sermon.” The same nomination says the journal names Cypress again in 1799, 1801, and 1803. A local history site adds that a Captain Perry who lived in the area put the bishop up more than once, and that Cypress was about a day’s ride from Charleston.

Indian Fields is harder to pin down, and the sources differ. The National Register nomination, written in 1972, says Asbury preached there in 1810 and that the original ground was in use by that year. The Wikipedia article and the campground historian Bill Segars both put his visits on December 21, 1801, and January 13, 1803, citing the journal. The journal does not say whether he preached at a camp or at the church, which had been organized in 1787. Either way, he was there, and the people kept meeting after he left.

A transcript from a documentary on the Cypress meeting adds a route: Asbury’s winter swing ran from Cattle Creek at Branchville through Indian Field and Cypress to the conference in Charleston, with the Black preacher known as Black Harry riding alongside.

What is a camp meeting, and why here?

Word of the Kentucky and Tennessee revivals reached Asbury in 1800 and 1801, and the South Carolina Encyclopedia says that in January 1801, riding through this state, he read accounts of the frontier meetings aloud to the people he met. The first large South Carolina camp meeting followed in April 1802 near Lancaster, with an estimated 12,000 present. Methodist membership in the state more than doubled between 1802 and 1805, from 7,443 to 16,089. By 1815 the Charleston Methodists numbered 4,075, of whom 3,793 were Black.

A camp meeting solved a plain problem. Crowds outgrew churches and houses, so families came by wagon, pitched tents around a preaching stand, and stayed a week. The tents became rough cabins and the name stayed. Segars counts seven surviving campgrounds in South Carolina and says four of them are in Dorchester County: Indian Field, Cypress, Shady Grove, and St. Paul. Shady Grove and St. Paul were established by Black congregations after the Civil War.

Can you visit the campgrounds?

Indian Field Methodist Campground is on S.C. Road S-18-73 off U.S. 15, about five miles north of St. George (GPS 33.222778, -80.546111). Ninety-nine two-story wooden “tents” stand in a ring roughly 690 feet across around an open tabernacle of 68 by 95 feet that seats about a thousand. The present ground dates to 1838, with the buildings finished about 1848 on a ten-acre tract deeded on the condition that a meeting be held at least every two years. It was listed in the National Register on March 30, 1973. Camp meeting runs the first week of October and ends on the first Sunday. A fire set in February 1995 burned several tents; they were rebuilt.

Cypress Methodist Camp Ground is on S.C. Road 18-182, Ridgeville, SC 29472 (GPS 33.103485, -80.273413), on 9.13 acres. The tents, originally 34 and now 53 by the SC Picture Project’s count, form a rectangle around the tabernacle, which is held together with wooden pegs rather than nails. Listed in the National Register April 26, 1978. Meeting is one week each October, about three weeks after Indian Field. Guests are usually invited, though visitors are often welcomed; the church number is (843) 871-1287. Arson fires in April and May 2008 destroyed thirteen tents, all since rebuilt.

Both grounds are private property owned by trustees. Outside of meeting week you can drive the loop road and look. Neither charges a fee. St. George is about 55 miles from Charleston by I-26 and U.S. 78; Ridgeville is closer to 35.

Why it matters to the county

Asbury came through here because the roads did. The Charleston-to-Augusta route and the river crossings put the Edisto circuit on his way, and he kept coming for thirty years. The tents at Indian Field pass down through families, and the names in the Cypress cemetery are the names on the mailboxes.

The tabernacle at Cypress has no walls. Nobody has ever needed to lock it.

The county map on this site marks both grounds, and the history page sets them against the rest of the record. The dispatches take up the territory in between, starting with /the-edisto-keeps-its-own/ and /not-yet/. See also /history/ and /map/.

Francis Asbury in the South Carolina Lowcountry