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Message from Pastor Bill – February 2010
Black History Profile: Reverend Lemuel Haynes 1753-1833
Dear Saints:
As a Senior at Morehouse College in Atlanta I took a History Seminar class (History was my major) entitled “Great Men and Women in America”. In this class, I was designated to research and present on Reverend Lemuel Haynes, who was probably the first African American ordained by a mainstream Protestant Church in the United States. Little did I know some twelve years ago that Haynes path is very similar to my call as an Associate Pastor in a predominately Anglo congregation. His pioneering efforts of multiculturalism and service is an important feature in exploring truly the religious pioneers in the African descent struggle of freedom.
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.
After the Revolutionary 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.
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.
Peace and Power,
Pastor Bill
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