Absalom Jones

Absalom Jones by Raphaelle Peale, 1810. (Courtesy Delaware Art Museum)

Born into slavery in Delaware, Absalom Jones (1746–1818) was brought to Philadelphia in 1762, where he attended a Quaker school at night. Manumitted in 1784, he went on to become a leader of that city’s African American religious community. In 1794 he founded St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, the first Black Episcopal church in the United States, and was ordained in 1802.

Related Resources

The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1839, vol. 1, no. 4 (New York, 1839), p. 19. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)

Petition to Protect Freed Slaves, 1797

Petition advocating the protection of freed Black people living in Philadelphia

Supporting Document

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, lithograph by W. L. Breton (Philadelphia, 1829). (Library Company of Philadelphia)

An Autobiographical Account from Childhood to Manumission, 1787

A personal story of an enslaved man’s struggle to purchase freedom for himself and his wife

Supporting Document

A Sunday Morning View of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. Lithograph by W. L. Breton (Philadelphia, 1823). (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. From Library Company of Philadelphia)

A Sermon on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1808

A commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade focusing on the forced separation of families

Supporting Document