Lemuel Haynes: 1753 - 1833
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Lemuel Haynes was probably the first African American ordained by a mainstream Protestant Church in the United States.
Haynes, the abandoned child of an African father and "a white woman of respectable ancestry," was born in 1753 at West Hartford, Connecticut. Five months later, he was bound to service until the age of 21 to David Rose of Middle Granville, Massachusetts.
With only a rudimentary formal education, Haynes developed a passion for books, especially the Bible and books on theology. As an adolescent, he frequently conducted services at the town parish, sometimes reading sermons of his own.
When his indenture ended in 1774, Haynes enlisted as a "Minuteman" in the local militia. While serving in the militia, he wrote a lengthy ballad-sermon about the April, 1775 Battle of Lexington. In the title of the poem, he refers to himself as "Lemuel a young Mollato who obtained what little knowledge he possesses, by his own Application to Letters." Although the poem emphasized the conflict between slavery and freedom, it did not directly address black slavery.
After the war, Haynes turned down the opportunity to study at Dartmouth College, instead choosing to study Latin and Greek with clergymen in Connecticut. In 1780 he was licensed to preach. He accepted a position with a white congregation in Middle Granville and later married a young white schoolteacher, Elizabeth Babbitt. In 1785, Haynes was officially ordained as a Congregational minister.
Haynes held three pastorships after his ordination. The first was with an all-white congregation in Torrington, Connecticut, where he left after two years due to the active prejudice of several members.
His second call to the pulpit, from a mostly white church in Rutland, Vermont that had a few "poor Africans," lasted for 30 years. During that time, Haynes developed an international reputation as a preacher and writer. In 1804, he received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College, the first ever bestowed upon an African American. In 1801, he published a tract called "The Nature and Importance of True Republicanism..." which contained his only public statement on the subject of race or slavery.
Haynes was a lifelong admirer of George Washington and an ardent Federalist. In 1818, conflicts with his congregation, ostensibly over politics and style, led to a parting; there was some speculation, however, that the church's displeasure with Haynes stemmed from racism. Haynes himself was known to say that "he lived with the people of Rutland thirty years, and they were so sagacious that at the end of that time they found out that he was a nigger, and so turned him away."
His last appointment was in Manchester, Vermont, where he counseled two men convicted of murder; they narrowly escaped hanging when the alleged "victim" reappeared. Haynes's writings on the seven-year ordeal became a bestseller for a decade.
For the last eleven years of his life, Haynes ministered to a congregation in upstate New York. He died in 1833, at the age of 80.
Nearly 150 years after his death, a manuscript written by Haynes around 1776 was discovered, in which he boldly stated "That an African... has an undeniable right to his Liberty." The treatise went on to condemn slavery as sin, and pointed out the irony of slave owners fighting for their own liberty while denying it to others.
Image Credit: From the collections of the Library of Congress
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The following address is no longer viable,
http://members.aol.com/CHRISHAYNE/lemuel.htm
A HAYNES OF RENOWN: REV. LEMUEL HAYNES
In the earlier years of the century, before social conditions were so fixed as they later became, a few men of Negro descent were pastors of white congregations. Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833), the first man of color formally ordained in the United States and a speaker of unusual spiritual power, so served several congregational churches in New England, spending the last eleven years of his life in Granville, New York.
It is further written that in 1777, at the age of 24, in the defense of his county he joined in the expedition to Ticonderoga to stop the inroads of Burgoyne's northern army. His ministry of the Gospel to northern white congregations came later.
Among the early popular preachers in the State of Connecticut was one who was born of an African father and white mother. He enjoyed excellent advantages for improving his intellect and became a very distinguished scholar, an eloquent and forcible preacher, and maintained a reputation for over thirty years. It is said his fame was created from the preaching of a sermon from Genesis 3-4, and his discussion with the venerable Hosea Ballou. He received the degree of A.M. from Middlebury College, Vermont, and was the first of the race to receive a degree of the kind in this country.
His birthplace was Hartford, Connecticut, and the date of his birth, 18 July 1753; he was also a "minute man" in 1774 at the Battle of Lexington. He joined the army at Roxboro; he was a volunteer in the expedition to Ticonderoga.
He lived to the age of eighty-one, and died 27 September 1833. His memory is preserved and we can with pride point to him as the first titled Negro in America.
The Middlebury College General Catalogue Sesquicentennial Edition issued in 1950 cites Lemuel Haynes as a recipient of an honorary degree in 1804. He was born in West Hartford, Connecticut July 18, 1753. Enlisted as a Minute Man in the Colonial Army, 1775; Volunteer in expedition to Ticonderoga, 1776. Supplied, Congregational church, Granville, NY 1780. Ordained, 1785. Pastor, Torrington, Connecticut 1785-1787; Rutland, Vt. 1787-1818. Removed to Manchester, VT, 1818. Pastor, Granville, NY 1822-1833. Author: "Divine Decrees, an Encouragement to the Use of Means" and "Universal Salvation."
Married Elizabeth Babbat, September 1783. Died in Granville, NY September 18, 1833.
Lemuel Haynes was married to Elizabeth Babbitt, 22 September 1783 at Hartford, Connecticut by Rev. Samuel Woodbridge. She was born 29 February 1763 at Dighton, Massachusetts and died 8 February 1836.
Born of a colored father and a white mother, Lemuel was bound out when 5 years of age to a Deacon Rose of Granville, MA. It is said that all his children were born in Vermont:
1. Elizabeth Haynes born 1785, married Benjamin Capron, Jr. 24 Feb 1809
2. Eunice Haynes born 3 Mar 1789 died 1831 at Granville, NY, unmarried.
3. Electra Haynes born 26 July 1791
4. Lemuel Haynes, Jr. born 11 July 1794
5. Sally Haynes born 6 May 1796
6. Olive Haynes born 9 August 1798 died 19 Sept 1823
7. Pamela Haynes born 14 October 1800
8. Samuel Woodbridge Haynes born 11 Jan 1803, a physician in NY
9. William Babbitt Haynes (twin) born 11 Jan 1803, a lawyer in MA.
10. Lois Haynes (no further information)
Link to Reverend Lemuel Haynes in Vermont History and Harford Black History for other versions of his life story.
Abstracted from an article in:
"Chronicle of the Haynes Family Association" Vol. 1, #3, March 1983, page 72
"Chronicle of the Haynes Family Association" Vol. 2, #2, December 1983, page 27
References:
Benjamin Brawley, A Short History of the American Negro (New York:, MacMillan Co., 1950.)
Timothy M. Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of Lemuel Haynes, (New York: Harper 1837/J.S.Taylor, 1839) An indispensable book which contains an etched portrait of Lemuel Haynes.
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopt, Inc., 1947)
Life Magazine, 22 November 1968, pp. 96-97
William J. Simmons, Men of Mark (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1970)
Albion B. Wilson, History of Granville, Massachusetts (Hartford, Connecticut Printers, 1954). This work states that Lemuel Haynes was born on 18 July 1753, the son of a black man and a Scotch servant girl, Alice Fitch, who was employed by John Haynes of West Hartford.
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by David Barton
Lemuel Haynes was abandoned by his parents when he was five months old. He was taken in and apprenticed by the David Rose family. According to Haynes: “He [David Rose] was a man of singular piety. I was taught the principles of religion. His wife . . . treated me as though I was her own child.”
Haynes was given the opportunity for education – something rare for African Americans in that day. Haynes explained: “I had the advantage of attending a common school equal with the other children. I was early taught to read.” He also educated himself at night by reading in front of a fireplace. He developed a lifelong love for the Bible and theology, and even as a youth he frequently held services and preached sermons at the town parish. He also memorized massive and lengthy portions of the Bible.
In 1774 when he turned 21 and had finished his tradesman apprenticeship, he enlisted as a Minuteman in the local Connecticut militia. While he was not part of the Battle of Lexington, he did write a lengthy ballad-sermon about that famous battle. However, a week following that battle, Haynes and the Connecticut troops were part of the siege of Boston. Haynes was also part of the military expedition against Fort Ticonderoga, made legendary by Ethan Allen and the famous Green Mountain Boys. Haynes became an ardent admirer of George Washington and remained so throughout his life. In fact, Haynes regularly preached sermons on Washington’s birthday and was an active member of the Washington Benevolent Society.
After the Revolution, Haynes continued his studies in Latin, Greek, and theology and became the first African American to be ordained by a mainstream Christian denomination (the Congregationalists, in 1785), to pastor a white congregation (a congregation in Connecticut), and to be awarded an honorary Master’s Degree (by Middlebury College in 1804). Over his life, Haynes pastored several churches in Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York (often white churches), published a number of sermons, and was a confidant and counselor to the presidents of both Yale and Harvard.
Lemuel Haynes died at the age of eighty, having written the epitaph for his tombstone: “Here lies the dust of a poor helldeserving sinner, who ventured into eternity trusting wholly on the merits of Christ for salvation. In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on earth, he invites his children, and all who read this, to trust their eternal interest on the same foundation.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuel_Haynes
Lemuel Haynes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Portrait of Lemuel Haynes
Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833) was an influential African American religious leader who argued against slavery.
John Saillant (2003, p. 3) writes, "His faith and social views are better documented than those of any African American born before the luminaries of the mid-nineteenth century."
Born in 1753 in West Hartford, Connecticut, little is known of his early life. His mother, reportedly Caucasian of some status, gave birth to him in the home of a man named Haynes, possibly an acquaintance sheltering her from scandal. The father was said to be of some form of African extraction. At the age of five months, Lemuel Haynes was given over to indentured servitude in Granville, Massachusetts. Although serving as an agricultural laborer, part of the agreement required educating him. Through accompanying his masters to church, he became exposed to Calvinist thought and religiosity.
At about twenty years of age, he saw the Aurora Borealis, and fearing the approach of the Day of Judgment as a result, he soon converted to Christianity. Freed in 1774 as his indenture expired, Haynes joined The Minutemen of Granville. In 1775, he responded with them to Roxbury, Massachusetts following the Boston Massacre. In 1776, he accompanied them in the securing of the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga. He returned to his previous labors in Granville as a free man after the northern campaign of the American War of Independence.
In response to the events at the Battle of Lexington, Haynes began to write extensively criticizing the slave trade and slavery. He also began to prepare sermons for family prayers and write theologically about life. Scripture, abolutionism, and republicanism impacted his published writings. Haynes argued that slavery denied blacks their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Paralleling the recent American experience with oppression to the slave experience, Haynes wrote, " Liberty is equally as precious to a Black man, as it is to a white one, and bondage as equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other."
By the 1780s, Haynes became a leading Calvinist minister in Vermont. His contemporary Caucasian republican and abolitionist thinkers saw slavery as a liability to the new country, but they argued for eventual slave expatriation to Africa. In contrast, Haynes continued to passionately argue along Calvinist lines that God's providential plan would defeat slavery and lead to the harmonious integration of the races as equals.
After his death, abolitionist thought would argue for the freedom of African Americans, but they tended to continue to see African Americans as inferiors. Echoes of Haynes' arguments for equality would not be so clearly, widely, and passionately heard again until the time of Martin Luther King.
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Trivia
Lemuel appears only once in Scripture in Proverbs 31. He was a king articulating prophecies taught him by his mother.
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References
Saillant, John (2003). "Black Puritan, Black Republican: The life and thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753-1833". New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515717-6.
Categories: African Americans | Civil rights activists
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