"Richard Allen" [February 14,1760-March 26,1831]

Was a minister,educator,and writer,and the founder in the 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME),the first independent black denomination in the United States.He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania.Richard was elected the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816.Richard was born into slavery to Benjamin Chew,a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia.When he was a child,he and his family were sold to Stokeley Sturgism,who had a plantation in Delaware.When Benjamin had financial problems,he sold Richard's mother and three of his five siblings.Richard had an older brother and sister left with him,and the three of them began to attend meetings of the local Methodist Society,which was welcoming to slaves and free blacks.They were encouraged by Stokeley although he was unconverted.Richard had taught himself to read and write.He joined the Methodist at age 17.Richard began evangelizing and attracted criticism from local slave owners.He and his brother redoubled their efforts for Stokeley so no one could say his slaves did not do well because of religion.Reverend Freeborn Garrettson,who had freed his own slaves in 1775,began to preach in Delaware;he was among many Methodist and Baptist ministers after the American Revolutionary War who encouraged slaveholders to emancipate their people.When Freeborn visited the Sturgis plantation to preach,Richard master was touched by this declaration...began to give consideration to the though that holding slaves was sinful...Stokeley soon was convinced that slavery was wrong,and offered his slaves an opportunity to buy their freedom.Richard performed extra work to earn the money and bought his freedom in 1780.After moving to Philadelphia,he married Sarah (1764-1849),who was born into slavery in Virginia's isle of Wright County.She had been brought to Philadelphia at age 8 and was free by 1800,when they met.They married within a year,she was Richard's second wife.They had six children:Richard,Jr,;James,John,Peter,Sarah and Ann.In addition to the work of the family,Sarah actively assisted Richard in the church.She supported work to take care of runaway slaves,including feeding them.In 1827,seeing that the ministers coming to conference looked bedraggled,she organized the Daughters of Conference as a women's organization to assist the church with their skills,initially they helped provide material support to the ministers,including mending their garments.The women's organization continued after Sarah's death,taking on more social welfare issues for church members and the community.She died at the home of her youngest daughter on July 16,1849,and was interred next to her husband in the lower level of Mother Bethel AME Church.Richard was qualified as a preacher in 1784,at the first conference of the Methodist Church in North America,in Baltimore,Maryland.He was a allowed to lead to lead services at 5 a.m.,which were attended mostly by blacks.He moved to Philadelphia,a center for blacks.In 1786,he became a preacher at St.George's Methodist Episcopal Church,in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,but was restricted to early morning services.As he attracted more black congregants,the church,slowly gaining a congregation of nearly 50,and supporting himself with a variety of jobs.He and Absalom Jones,also a Methodist preacher,resented the white congregants'segregating the blacks for worship and prayer.They decided to leave St.George's to create independent worship for African Americans.This brought some opposition from the white church as well as the more established blacks of the community.In 1787,Richard and Absalom led the black members St.George's Methodist Church.They formed the Free African Society (FAS),a non-denominational mutual aid society,which found an available lot on Sixth Street near Lombard.Richard negotiated a price and purchased this lot in 1787  to build a church,but it was years before they had a building.Now occupied by Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,this is the oldest parcel of real estate in the United States owned continuously by African-Americans.Over time,most of the FAS members chose to affiliate with the Episcopal Church as many blacks in Philadelphia had been Anglicans since the 1740s.They founded the African Church with Absalom Jones.It was accepted as a parish congregation and opened its doors on July 17,1794 as the African Episcopal Church of St.Thomas.In 1795,Absalom was ordained as a deacon,and in 1804 as a priest,becoming the first black ordained in the United States as an Episcopal priest.Richard and others wanted to continue in the Methodist practice.He called their congregation the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).Converting a blacksmith shop on Sixth Street,the leaders opened the doors of Bethel AME Church on July 29,1794.At first affiliated with the larger Methodist Episcopal Church,they had to rely on white ministers for communion.In recognition of his leadership and preaching,in 1799,Richard was ordained as the first black Methodist minister,by Bishop Francis Asbury.He and the congregation still had to continue to negotiate white negotiate oversight and deal with white elders of the denomination.A decade after its founding,the AME Church had 457 members and in 1813,it had 1,272.In 1816,Richard united four African-American congregations of the Methodist Church in Philadelphia,Salem,New Jersey;Delaware,and Maryland.Together they founded the independent denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME),the first fully independent black denomination in the United States.On April 10,1816,the other ministers elected him as their first bishop.The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest and largest formal institution in black America.From 1797 until his death Richard and Sarah operated a station on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves.Mother Bethel Church continued such aid until the Emancipation During and after the Civil War,the congregation also aided black migrating to Philadelphia from the rural South,helping them to learn its urban ways.