Francis Makemie

Francis Makemie (born c. 1658, County Donegal, Ire.—died 1707/08, probably near New York City [U.S.]) was a colonial Presbyterian leader at Accomack, Va., who joined in forming the first American presbytery (1706) that united the scattered Dissenting churches in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

During the 1680s and ’90s Makemie had preached and traded in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas while also seeking to unite the various struggling Protestant churches of these areas in a common cause. Anglican attempts to silence him by arrest awakened Makemie to the churches’ plight, and, with the help of Increase Mather and other Boston Congregationalists, he resisted the efforts of the Church of England to suppress dissident churches. In 1707 Makemie was acquitted of the charge of preaching on Long Island without a license, and thereafter the provisions of Britain’s Toleration Act were claimed by all Dissenters in the American Colonies.