Richard Allen

Allen’s autobiography opens with his birth on 14 February 1760 as a slave of Benjamin Chew of Philadelphia (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, pp. 5–7). He was sold with his parents into Delaware, was converted, joined the Methodist society, and bought his time from his master for sixty pounds in gold and silver or two thousand dollars in continental money (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, pp. 5–7). He cut wood, worked in a brick-yard and drove a wagon while he preached (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, pp. 7–8), and in 1785 declined to travel with Bishop Asbury on terms that would have kept him from mixing with slaves in the southern states (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, p. 11).

He led the Black Methodists out of St George’s Church after they were pulled from their knees at prayer (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, p. 13), and opened Bethel church in 1794 (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, pp. 17–18). During the yellow fever of 1793 he and Absalom Jones organized Black Philadelphians to nurse the sick and bury the dead, and afterwards published a defence of them (Allen, Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours, pp. 29–30). On 11 April 1816 he was set apart as bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church, Doctrines and Discipline (1817), p. 10). See Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.