1837 LEMUEL HAYNES. Memoir of Lemuel Haynes - Black Revolutionary War and Early Minister. Rare!

Very rare in the first edition, with the only other example on the market at the time of cataloging offered at more than four times our price. 

Lemuel Haynes [b.1753] is generally considered the first African American ordained by a mainstream Protestant Church in the United States. Abandoned as a "mixed race" child of an African father and "a white woman of respectable ancestry," he was born in West Hartford, Connecticut and 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.

When his indenture ended in 1774, Haynes enlisted as a "Minuteman" in the local militia. While serving in the militia, he wrote a lengthy ballad-sermon about the April, 1775 Battle of Lexington. In the title of the poem, he refers to himself as "Lemuel, A Young Mollato who Obtained what Little Knowledge he Possesses by his Own Application to Letters." 

After the 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 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."

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.

Cooley, Timothy Mather. Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, A. M., for Many Years Pastor of a Church in Rutland, VT., and Late in Granville, New-York. By Timothy Mather Cooley, D. D., Pastor for the First Church in Granville, Mass. With Some Introductory Remarks by William B. Sprague, D. D., Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany. New-York. Harper & Brothers. 1837. 345pp. 

A good copy, bound in cloth with a loss at the spine from a removed label, but generally solid; ex library with usual markings, and having light to moderate foxing. Rare in any state, the frontis is very often pilfered. Present and looking quite tidy in this example.