Joseph Pilmore and His Journal

Joseph Pilmore (1743-1825, sometimes spelled Pilmoor) was born in Fadmoor, North Yorkshire, about 50 miles northeast of Leeds. As a young farm servant, he became acquainted with John Wesley while attending night meetings in the nearby village of Helmsley, he soon converted and became a traveling preacher of Wesley’s message. In 1769, after spending time in Ireland and Wales, Pilmore took up a challenge from Wesley to preach in the American colonies, making himself and Richard Boardman the first two Methodist preachers sent by Wesley himself to the New World. His journal of his first five years spent in America, which was transcribed and published in 1969, is a fascinating window into the life of a traveling preacher in the early years of American Methodism. He returned to England in 1774 just before the Revolutionary War, coming back to America once again in 1785 to lead a Protestant Episcopal church.