1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/United Methodist Free Churches

UNITED METHODIST FREE CHURCHES, an English Nonconformist community merged since 1907 in the United Methodist Church (q.v.). The organization was itself formed in 1857 by the amalgamation of the “Wesleyan Association” (which had in 1836 largely absorbed the Protestant Methodists of 1828) and the “Wesleyan Reformers” (dating frorn 1849, when a number of Wesleyan Methodist ministers were expelled on a charge of insubordination).