As we noted earlier in this series, Robert Raikes is given the main credit for starting the Sunday School movement in 1780, although some Sunday Schools existed earlier in England. Efforts to help children in North America began between 1735 and 1737, dur ing a missionary trip across the Atlantic by the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley. He and several colleagues, including his brother Charles, taught children in Georgia in the American colonies, sowing the seeds for Sunday Schools there.
In a Letter to a friend at Oxford in 1737, John Wesley wrote: "I have now no fellow labourer [in Savannah] but Mr. Delamotte, who has taken charge of between thirty and forty children.' These he not only taught 'to read, write, and cast accounts,' but also instructed in the Christian faith." Frank Baker, From Wesley to Asbury: Studies in Early American Methodism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1976), p. 201 .
After Wesley returned to England and the other workers had also moved to new areas, Charles Delamotte carried on this work. What happened next with spiritual education for children in America was greatly influenced by a more encompassing development: inter est in evangelizing the colonies led the outstanding preacher, George Whitefield, to cross the Atlantic and preach the gospel. The impact of his inspired and tireless efforts was enormous.
