[3] Hosier is an occupational surname referring to a maker or seller of hosiery, still commonly worn by men as well as women in the 18th century.

[4] Another history instructor, Tom Horton, suggests that if the uncommon surname Hoosier is correct, it would represent a parallel development: the application to Harry of the same epithet – referring to "low-born" and "fundamentalist" hillbillies of the kind Harry ministered to in his circuit riding – that was later applied to the early settlers on the Indiana shore of the Ohio River.

[3] He seems to have been sold north to Baltimore, Maryland, (possibly to the plantation of Harry Gough, a prominent Methodist there) and to have gained his freedom around the end of the American Revolution.

[5][self-published source] The first reference to Hosier in Asbury's journals observes, "If I had Harry to go with me and meet the colored people, it would be attended with a blessing".

[7] Speaking after Asbury,[8] Hosier delivered his first sermon – "The Barren Fig Tree", concerning Luke 13:6–9[5] – to the black Methodist congregation at Adams's Chapel in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1781.

[5] Although Asbury had originally intended to use Hosier to minister among blacks and they "came a great distance to hear him", his delivery was so effective and affecting that his primary audience seems to have been white.

[9] As with most early Methodist preachers, he was a circuit-rider and traveled from Cainhoy, South Carolina,[5] to Boston, Massachusetts, usually in attendance with Asbury.

[10] Hosier was present at the Christmas Conference from December 24, 1784, to January 2, 1785, at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Methodist Episcopal Church of America was formally founded.

Touring Connecticut and Massachusetts with Freeborn Garrettson, Hosier stayed with Prince Hall, "master mason for the Africans", and preached in Boston before a crowd of a thousand.