This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

To search for the American Stories podcast, go to the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your

podcasts.

How did Indiana get its nickname as the Hoosier State?

And how did people from Indiana come to be known as Hoosiers?

Here to answer these questions and to tell the story is Dr. Stephen Flick, head of the Christian Heritage Fellowship.

Let's take a listen.

One such individual that has so deeply influenced our nation

and one state in particular,

is a black man, a black Methodist preacher

by the name of Harry Hoosier.

John Wesley, the well-known evangelist and father of Methodism at one of his conferences in the British Isles

in 1771 called for his itinerant ministers to volunteer to go to America. Among those who volunteered was a young man by the name of Francis Asbury.

In a few short years, Francis Asbury would rise to the highest office of Bishop in America.

Having traveled thousands upon thousands of miles,

his face was more readily recognized

than the father of our nation, George Washington.

It was during the American Revolution

that Francis Asbury asked Harry Hoosier to travel with him throughout all of the colonies from New England, the middle colonies, and southern colonies.

And it was there that Harry Hoosier gained a reputation as the most widely accepted and widely applauded

minister of his day. Harry Hoosier had been born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He had been

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