Home > Shaping of America 1783-1815 > James McGready Biography

Born 1760 (Pennsylvania)
Died February 1817 (Henderson County, Kentucky)

Presbyterian preacher

James McGready is known as the father of revivalism in the American West, which in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. McGready's use of camp meetings brought religion to the masses on the western frontier of the United States. As a result, America experienced a "Second Great Awakening," a period of widespread revival in religious activity. (A first "Great Awakening" had occurred in the early eighteenth century.) Through McGready and others, Protestantism (Christian beliefs held by congregations that are independent of the Catholic pope and other central authority) continued to serve as an important force in the nation's history.