SLAVES NARRATIVES - Richard Allen (1760-1831)
Richard Allen
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Founder and first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760 in Philadelphia. His owner, Benjamin Chew, a Quaker lawyer, owned the Allen family which included Richard’s parents and three other children. Soon afterwards Chew sold Richard Allen, his parents and three other children were sold to a Mr. Stokeley in Delaware, near Dover. Allen recorded that Stokeley was a very tender and humane man who was more like a father to his slaves than a master.
As Richard and his brother grew older, they were permitted to attend meetings of the Methodist Society. Allen was converted at the age of 17. He began preaching in 1780. Through thrift and industry, he and his brother worked at night to pay for their freedom.
At age seventeen, Allen was converted under the preaching of an itinerant Methodist preacher as was his master, Stokeley Sturgis. After his conversion Sturgis offered his slaves the opportunity to buy their freedom. |
Allen did in 1783 after working odd jobs for five years to earn enough money for the purchase. In the meantime, Allen began to preach in Methodist churches and meetings in the Baltimore area. In 1786, he was invited through his Methodist connections to return to Philadelphia, where he joined St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church where he became active in teaching and preaching. He commenced traveling in 1783 and later returned to Philadelphia and joined the white congregation at St. Georges's Methodist Episcopal Church. He was licensed to preach in 1784 and was permitted to hold services in the morning about 5 a.m. As the number of African Americans attending St. George’s increased, racial tensions mounted. Allen preached at 5:00 a.m. in special services on Sunday mornings to approximately 50 African American Methodists. When they attended the regular morning service, segregated seating was instituted.
Allen became convinced that a separate church was necessary for the black congregants. In 1787, Allen, fellow minister Absalom Jones, and a number of other African Americans walked out and formed a separate church that would become Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Methodist church in the United States specifically for African Americans. On July 29, 1794, Bethel was dedicated by Bishop Francis Asbury. Allen served Bethel Church as its pastor, and he was ordained a deacon by Asbury in 1799.
Other African American Methodist churches were formed in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. After two decades of conflict with white Methodism, Allen and other African American Methodist preachers hosted a meeting on April 9, 1816 in Philadelphia which would bring these churches together to organize a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Allen was elected bishop, and with his consecration, became the first African American bishop in the United States. When he died in 1831, the AME church was well-established in the United States and supported missions in several countries overseas.
Allen cared passionately for education and opened a day school for African American children. He abhorred slavery, worked actively for abolition, and maintained a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was committed to African Americans’ self-determination in the United States and eventually opposed all colonization plans for African Americans in other countries.
Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, William Gray and William Wilcher were appointed to find a lot to build a church where the worship of God could be carried on without interference.A lot was selected on Sixth Street near Lombard, in Philadelphia, and Richard Allen was authorized to negotiate for its purchase. The lot belonged to Mark Wilcox.
Roughcast Church
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This lot, purchased by Richard Allen in 1787, is the oldest parcel of real estate owned continuously by black people in the United States. All church buildings of Mother Bethel have been erected on the same ground.Despite his lack of formal medical training, Allen was a noted "Bleeder", the equivalent of our present day surgeons.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leading physician of the time and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, gave praise to Bishop Allen for his services during the Black Plague in 1793 which took the lives of thousands of Philadelphians. |
In 1791 Allen established what was known as the Blacksmith Shop Meeting House when he purchased an abandoned blacksmith shop form a man named Sims and moved it to a plot of ground on 6th Street between Lombard and Pine Streets. This building was dedicated as a church in 1794 by Bishop Francis A. Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
From July 1805, Allen conducted services in the "Roughcast Church". This had been the first brick church erected on American soil by people of color. The African Methodist Episcopal denomination was organized in Philadelphia in 1816. Richard Allen was consecrated as its first Bishop at the General Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 10, 1816. In 1841 the red brick church was built to replace the old roughcast one, and remained in use until the present church (dedicated in 1890) was erected in its place on the original plot of ground.
Allen was an organizer of the Free African Society, a group that fostered self-help and self-dependence. He established day and night schools, and was co-organizer of the first Masonic Lodge among colored men in Pennsylvania, African Lodge 459 in Philadelphia. From 1797 to his death on March 26, 1831, Allen operated a station on the Underground Railway for escaping slaves. This work was continued by Bethel Church until the Emancipation.Bishop Allen was married to Sarah Bass Allen. He was the father of six children- Richard Jr., James, John, Peter, Sarah and Ann.
Slaves Narratives - Bethany Veney
return to American Slavery Exhibit - Part 3
References:
Allen, Richard [Pennsylvania] (1760-1831): http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/allen-richard-pennsylvania-1760-1831
Unbound Profiles in Black History - Richard Allen:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/bhm/Allen1.shtml