Burch, Robert

Burch, Robert a Methodist Episcopal minister, was born in Tyrone county, Ireland, about 1777, and emigrated to America with his brother Thomas while very young. He entered the itinerant ministry in the Baltimore Conference in 1804; from 1811 to 1815 he was presiding elder on Carlisle District, and in 1816 was transferred to the Philadelphia Conference, and stationed in Philadelphia. While in the Baltimore Conference he was repeatedly stationed in that city and was for some time the travelling companion of Bishop Asbury. After filling the most important appointments in the Philadelphia Conference, he was set off with the new Genesee Conference, where he filled the principal districts and stations until 1837, when he took the superannuated relation. He died at Canandaigua, N. Y., July, 1855. He was a man of commanding powers and devoted piety, and one of the most laborious and efficient pioneers of American Methodism. — Minutes of Conferences, v. 594.