page_title: Lemuel Haynes
section_title: Ministry
hierarchical_section_title: Lemuel Haynes / Ministry
caption_attribution_description: English: Home of Lemuel Haynes, first African-American ordained as a minister, in South Granville, NY, USA
context_page_description: Lemuel Haynes was an American clergyman. A veteran of the American Revolution, Haynes was the first black man in the United States to be ordained as a minister.
  Haynes was a native of West Hartford, Connecticut, and was the son of an African American man and a white woman. He spent much of his childhood as an indentured servant in the house of a Granville, Massachusetts farmer. A regular churchgoer, he began to preach as a boy. He served in the militia during the American Revolution, including garrison duty at the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. Haynes also became an anti-slavery activist. In addition to arguing against involuntary servitude and preaching against the slave trade, Haynes also advocated against the colonization movement, arguing that people of African descent living in the United States should be entitled to the same rights as other citizens, and that having them resettle in Africa would not be beneficial.
  Ordained in the Congregational church in 1785, Haynes pastored a church in Torrington, Connecticut for three years. In 1788, Haynes accepted a call to pastor the West Parish Church of Rutland, Vermont, where he remained for the next 30 years.
context_section_description: After his militia service, Haynes studied theology with members of the clergy in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He received his license to preach in 1780, along with a position as temporary 'supply' to his home congregation in Middle Granville. About the same time, he began his many years of service as a missionary in the wilderness of the New Hampshire Grants, soon to be known as the independent Vermont Republic and finally the American state of Vermont.
  Haynes was ordained in 1785 and settled at Hemlock Congregational Church in Torrington, Connecticut. He was the first African American ordained in the United States. On March 28, 1788, Haynes left his pastorate at Torrington to accept a call at the West Parish Church of Rutland, Vermont (now West Rutland's United Church of Christ), where he led the mostly white congregation for 30 years.
  Haynes continued to write and speak about slavery.  His contemporary white republican and abolitionist thinkers did see slavery as a liability to the new country, but most argued for eventual slave expatriation to Africa. The American Colonization Society (founded in 1817) was the largest colonization group. Included among its supporters were people such as James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The ACS was strongly supported in Vermont. In contrast, Haynes continued to passionately argue along Calvinist lines that God's providential plan would defeat slavery and lead to the harmonious integration of the races as equals.
  After asking for and accepting dismissal from West Rutland in 1818, he took a temporary post at Manchester.  His final pastorate was in South Granville, New York where he was minister of the South Granville Congregational Church from 1822 to 1833.
caption: Haynes' last home, in South Granville, now a National Historic Landmark
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