Francis Makemie (1658–1708) was an Ulster Scots clergyman, considered to be the founder of Presbyterianism in the United States of America. Early and family life Makemie was born in Ramelton, County Donegal, Ireland (part of the Province of Ulster). He attended the University of Glasgow, where he underwent a religious conversion and enrolled as "Franciscus Makemus Scoto-Hyburnus". He went on to be ordained a minister by the Presbytery of Laggan in West Ulster in 1681. Ten years after emigrating to America in 1682, Makemie married Naomi Anderson, the daughter of a successful Maryland businessman and landowner. They had two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth. Ministry in America At the behest of Colonel William Stevens, an Episcopalian from Rehobeth, Maryland, Rev. Makemie was sent as a missionary to America, arriving in Maryland in 1683. Makemie initially preached in Somerset County, Maryland and established the Rehobeth Presbyterian Church the oldest Presbyterian Church in America, near the Coventry Parish Church which Col. Stevens attended. The ruins of Coventry Parish Church still stand nearby. Makemie also supported himself as a merchant and traveled among other Scots-Irish communities, many of which were isolated, as well as suspicious of each other. In eastern Somerset County (which became Worcester County, Maryland in 1742, where All Hallows Episcopal Church would be erected about a decade later), Makemie founded the first Presbyterian community in the Town of Snow Hill, which had been founded in 1686 and named for a London neighborhood. Snow Hill was to be the center of the Presbytery of Snow Hill, which received a charter from Maryland's General Assembly, but was never activated. Nonetheless, a Presbyterian Church was erected early on in Snow Hill, and the current Makemie Memorial Presbyterian Church is the fourth building and the site, as well as the congregation's third location in Snow Hill. The first building was near the Pocomoke River, which was the chief means of travel in the 17th and early 18th centuries and how Makemie often traveled to visit his congregations at Rehoboth and further away, as well on what later became U.S. Route 13 down the Delmarva Peninsula. This log building was replaced by a frame building, a little further away from the water but still subject to flooding. Makemie traveled widely on along the American coast between North Carolina and New York, as well as participating in the West Indies Trade. In 1692, the year Makemie was