Otterbein, Philip William

Philip William Otterbein (1726-1813) was born June 3, 1726 in Dillenburg, Germany. In 1748 he was approved a candidate for ministry and was ordained in 1749. He volunteered to go to American to fill vacant pulpits among the German Reformed in 1752. He was soon called to the congregation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He married Susan LeRoy of Lancaster, in 1762. She died in 1768 and he remained a widower for the rest of his life. In 1767 he attended a meeting where he heard Martin Boehm, Mennonite bishop, preach. This occasion began a friendship which furnished roots for a religious movement that eventually was to culminate in the formation of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Perhaps at the urging of Francis Asbury, Otterbein assumed charge of an independent Reformed congregation in Baltimore, Maryland in 1774. A close friendship developed between Asbury and Otterbein. Never intending to begin a new church, Otterbein and a group of laymen and ministers began to meet regularly for greater spirituality and inward piety. This eventually resulted in a breakaway and the formation of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Otterbein and Boehm became its first bishops. Otterbein participated in Asbury's consecration and ordination as bishop December 27, 1784 in Baltimore, Maryland. Otterbein never fully recovered from a serious illness in 1805. He remained in Baltimore until his death on November 17, 1813.