Asbury was sent to America by John Wesley in 1771 and was the only Methodist preacher of his standing to stay through the Revolution, when the movement's English associations made it suspect. That decision effectively made him the founder of American Methodism.
He spent the next four decades on horseback — crossing the Alleghenies some sixty times, preaching thousands of sermons, ordaining hundreds of preachers, and organising the circuit system that let a handful of itinerants cover an expanding frontier. He never married, held almost no property, and was frequently ill. Under him American Methodism grew from a few hundred members to more than two hundred thousand.