Rev. Henry Beam/Boehm (1775-1875)

Cyclopædia of Methodism. Embracing Sketches of its Rise, Progress, and Present Condition with Biographical Notices, Matthew Simpson, Editor, 1878, pp. 289-290.
BOEHM, HENRY (1775-1875), American itinerant preacher, was born in Lancaster County, Pa., June 8, 1775, the son of MARTIN BOEHM, who was expelled from the Mennonites for his "too evangelical opinions" and became a bishop of the UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST. The family home at Conestoga sheltered many of the itinerant preachers of the pioneer period of Methodism. Henry Boehm's boyhood was passed under frontier conditions and amid these religious influences. He was a self-trained man of twenty-five when he became an itinerant preacher of the M. E. CHURCH, traveling circuits in MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, and the regions beyond. Later he served in PENNSYLVANIA, introducing Methodism into Harrisburg and Reading.

Boehm was able to preach in both English and German. Before 1810 he had preached in German in fourteen different states. At FRANCIS ASBURY's request he superintended the translation of the 1805 Methodist Discipline into the German language, printed in 1808 at Lancaster, Pa. As traveling companion of Bishop Asbury for five years he visited annually not only all the states along the Atlantic coast, but all the frontier settlements and many of the isolated homes. After he ceased to travel with Bishop Asbury he was appointed to various important districts of the rapidly growing denomination needing skilled leadership, and then to pulpits of commanding influence in Pennsylvania and NEW JERSEY until old age compelled him to ask release from regular ministerial duties. After his one hundredth birthday he preached several times, and only a few days before his death on Dec. 28, 1875, he gave a formal address.

References:
H. Boehm, Reminiscences. 1875.
Dictionary of American Biography.