page_title: Asbury Grove
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Asbury Grove / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: "Vesper Circle: Outdoor worship under the pines" Asbury Grove Hamilton, Massachusetts Asbury Grove was established in 1859 as a Methodist summer camp meeting, and just celebrated its 150th anniversary as an active Christian community. The Asbury Grove Historical District was accepted for inclusion to the National Register of Historic Place in November, 2009, #09000935.
context_page_description: Asbury Grove, located in Hamilton, Massachusetts, was formed during the camp meeting religious movement popular in the mid-19th century. Originally set on seventy-five acres of land, the camp was founded by the Methodist church in 1857. Ten of the original seventy-five acres were purchased from Joseph Dodge, a local farmer. This land included a farmhouse, which later became the Superintendent's Cottage.
  The camp grounds were used in the summer months by Methodist congregations from towns along the North Shore of Massachusetts. The camp was named after Bishop Francis Asbury, a prominent member of the Methodist camp meeting circuit in the early 19th century.
  The camp was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Asbury Grove Historic District in 2009.
context_section_description: The first meeting at Asbury Grove was held in the third week of August, 1859, and attracted 2,000 people at its inception. Some reports state that by the end of that first week, the attendance had grown to nearly 12,000. As with other camp meetings in other towns, these were major events, often doubling or tripling (or, multiplying even further) a town's population during the gathering.
  Reverend Gorham proposed that camp life should be modest, and most early camp meetings reflected this ideology by constructing only cloth tents (participants paid a small fee to rent a tent site) and wooden preaching stands. Gorham also encouraged the use of “society tents” where smaller groups could meet to hold bible study and prayer meetings. 
  Asbury Grove's main preaching venue became The Circle, which was surrounded by 36 large tents (one for each of the member churches). These large tents had wood walls measuring six feet high, a canvas roof, and the ground inside was often covered in straw.
caption: The Circle at Asbury Grove
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