Jehu Jones

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jehu Jones, Jr. (born September 4, 1786 in Charleston , South Carolina , † September 28, 1852 in Centerville , New Jersey ) was an American Lutheran minister.

meaning

Jehu Jones was the first African American Lutheran ordained , founded one of the first African American Lutheran churches in the United States, and took an active part in improving the social welfare of African Americans.

Life

Early years and family

Born a slave in Charleston , South Carolina , Jones was named after his father, Jehu Jones Sr., a tailor who bought himself free in 1798 (along with his son's mother, Abigail, and later a successful real estate investor and innkeeper) in Charleston was. Jehu Jones was of mixed ethnic origin and was able to become a member of the privileged mulatto elite of Charleston; his father bought his first slave in 1807. Jones took over tailoring from his father around 1816, who concentrated his own efforts on a hotel he opened to serve white travelers.

Jehu Jones Jr. was originally affiliated with the Episcopal Church of the United States but joined the Lutheran Church. From 1820 he belonged to the Lutheran Johannes Congregation of Charleston. After the Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822, South Carolina increasingly restricted the rights of free African Americans.

Jehu Jones' brother, the missionary Edward Jones , was the first African American college graduate and later immigrated to Freetown , Sierra Leone , where he became the first director of Fourah Bay College.

Ministry

In 1832, encouraged by Pastor John Bachman , Jones traveled to New York to be ordained missionary by the Synod there, having accepted the post of missionary in Liberia . There he wanted to work with freed slaves who were sent by the American Colonization Society and emigrated to this new nation.

Jones did not reach Liberia, however, as he was briefly jailed on his return to Charleston after his ordination for violating a new state law in South Carolina, enacted after the Nat Turner slave revolt, which increased the ban on free African Americans in return to the state, which his mother Abigail had seen when she returned from a trip to New York some time before 1827.

After his father's death (and his own release from prison) in 1833, Jones inherited and moved to Philadelphia . In June, the local Lutheran Church there named Jones a missionary to the city's African-American population, already served by St. Thomas' Episcopal Church . Shortly thereafter, he and his Pauline Lutheran Congregation decided to build a church and, with the help of other Lutheran congregations in the area, bought two lots on Quince Street. When 40% of the construction costs were collected, Pastor Jones and his Lutheran ministers Philip Mayer and Benjamin Keller inaugurated the building in 1836. Since three years later there was still about $ 1300 missing to repay the mortgage, it was declared forfeited and auctioned. The building is now home to the Mask and Wig Club .

Jones remained active in the Afro-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania state politics and the national Colored Conventions Movement until at least 1851, the year before his death. In 1845, he helped organize a gathering to unite released African Americans for a civil rights petition. He and the Pauline Church also served in the Society for Moral Reform and Improvement, a group of African American churches whose aim was to improve the social conditions for Afro-Americans in Philadelphia. Jones also founded Lutheran churches (with congregations of all races) in Gettysburg and Chambersburg .

legacy

The calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates the pastor on November 24th, together with Justus Falckner and William Alfred Passavant . The year after his death, the Methodist Church ordained Daniel Payne, who was also born in Charleston and moved to Pennsylvania, as its first African American bishop. (Payne had studied at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg around 1835, but was never ordained by that church.Instead, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1842. The Lutheran calendar recalls Payne, who helped found Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856 , Nov. 2.) Although the Pauline Church disbanded a few years after Jones' death, its former building still stands in Philadelphia.

source

The article was originally translated from the English Wikipedia, the source of which is:

literature

  • Jehu Jones (1786-1852): The First African American Lutheran Minister , Lutheran Quarterly 10 (1996): 424-43

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L. Deane Lagerquist: The Lutherans . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, ISBN 0-313-27549-1 , pp. 192 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ http://www.blackpast.org/aah/jones-jehu-sr-1769-1833
  3. ↑ http://www.blackpast.org/aah/jones-jehu-jr-1786-1852
  4. ↑ African American Registry: From slavery to ministry, Jehu Jones !, there cited: Marvin Andrew McMickle, An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage (Judson Press 2002) ( Memento of February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ The original address at 150 South Quince Street was changed to 310 South Quince Street in the 1850s.
personal data
SURNAME Jones, Jehu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Jehu jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first African American pastor and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston , South Carolina
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1852
Place of death Centerville , New Jersey