Asbury United Methodist Church and Bethel Chapel and Cemetery is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

containing a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

, and

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

at 19 Old Post Road in

Croton-on-Hudson Croton-on-Hudson is a administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 8,327 at the 2020 United States census over 8,070 at the ...

Westchester County, New York Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City. According to the 2020 United States Census, the county had a population o ...

. The church was built in 1883 and is a rectangular brick building with a multi-colored

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

-covered gable roof in the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style. It features large Gothic-arched stained and leaded glass windows added in 1891 and a square, engaged, two stage tower. The chapel was built about 1790 and is a -story, two-by-two-bay, clapboard-sided building on a

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

foundation.

Francis Asbury Francis Asbury (August 20 or 21, 1745 – March 31, 1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ...

(1745–1816) is known to have visited the chapel on September 20, 1795. The cemetery is in two sections and contains about 5,000 graves; the date of the earliest burial is 1801. It includes the grave of noted playwright and author

Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play ''A Raisin in the Sun'', highlig ...

(1930–1965). ''See also:'' It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2000.

References

External links

*
Asbury United Methodist Church website
* United Methodist churches in New York (state) Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) National Register of Historic Places in Westchester County, New York Federal architecture in New York (state) Churches completed in 1790 18th-century Methodist church buildings in the United States Cemeteries in Westchester County, New York Methodist cemeteries 1790 establishments in New York (state) Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) {{US-cemetery-stub