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Mcknight's Meeting House
US 158 at Lassiter Lake Road, Clemmons,
NC,
USA
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North Carolina State
Historical Marker |
Marker Text: "Est. by Methodists ca. 1782. Annual Conferences held here in 1789, 1790, & 1791 by Bishop Asbury. Site was 400 yards N.W." George McKnight lived near modern-day Clemmons, in the area now known as Tanglewood. His deed for 611 acres along the Yadkin River was recorded in 1762. On his property, McKnight established a meeting house that he opened to any religious group needing a place to worship. Moravians were using it as early as 1772. When the Methodists needed a site for preachers on their Yadkin Circuit, founded in 1782, they utilized McKnight’s Meeting House.
Bishop Francis Asbury preached at the chapel in 1787. The Methodist Episcopal Church held its annual conferences, conducted by Bishop Asbury, at McKnight’s in 1789, 1790, and 1791. Those conferences drew members of the clergy from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Each of the conferences was important to the newly established Methodist Church, dealing with such topics as the need for Methodist schools and the dissemination of religious literature.
The 1789 conference at McKnight’s is considered the launching point for the Methodist Armenian Magazine as well as the first stage in developing conference-supported schools. North Carolina’s first Methodist Conference School, Cokesbury, opened about five years later just across the Yadkin River from McKnight’s Meeting House. The 1791 Conference at McKnight’s has been called the “one of the most spiritual Conferences in the history of North Carolina Methodism.”
References:
Larry E. Tise, Yadkin Melton Pot: Methodism and the Moravians in the Yadkin Valley, 1750-1850, and Mt. Tabor Church, 1845-1966 (1967)
W. L. Grissom, History of Methodism in North Carolina (1905)
William J. Hall and Helen J. McMurray, Tanglewood: Historic Gem of Forsyth County, North Carolina (1979)
Grady L. E. Carroll, Francis Asbury in North Carolina (1964)
Adelaide L. Fries, ed., Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, II (1968)
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