Lemuel Haynes, Black Puritan and Patriot

by Alwyn York, Conference Historian

Lemuel Haynes was born under about the most unfavorable circumstances imaginable. He was an illegitimate child of mixed race, abandoned by his own parents. But by the grace of God and through his own intelligence and ability he went on to have a highly successful career as a Congregational minister. He is believed to be the first African-American ordained by a mainstream Protestant denomination in the United States.

Haynes was born in 1753 in West Hartford, Connecticut, the son of an unknown black man and a “white woman of respectable ancestry.” His mother abandoned him soon after his birth, and refused to see or visit him as he was growing up. At the age of five months he was carried to the home of Deacon David Rose in Granville, Connecticut, where he was bound as an indentured servant until the age of twenty-one.

In the case of Lemuel Haynes the normally inhumane system of indentured servitude turned into an inestimable blessing. From the beginning the Rose family treated Haynes more as a son than a servant. Mrs. Rose became like a mother to him. In fact, she used to tell the neighbors that she loved Lemuel more than her own children. The Rose family was deeply spiritual, so young Lemuel grew up in an intensely religious environment where daily prayer was offered, the Sabbath was sanctified, and the evening before the Sabbath was devoted to the religious instruction of the household.

He attended the district school with the other children of the area and showed a great aptitude for learning. He did not have access to very many books, but he made the most of those that were available to him. He intensely studied the Bible as well as Isaac Watts’ psalms and hymns and the writings of English Congregationalist Philip Doddridge. His conversion came around the age of twenty. He was alarmed by an appearance of the Aurora Borealis in the night sky, which he took as a sign of the coming Day of Judgment, and that led him to seek peace with God.

Haynes was intensely patriotic and fought in the American Revolution. When his indenture ended in 1774, he enlisted in the local militia as a Minuteman. In 1775 he marched with his militia company to Roxbury, Massachusetts following the battles of Lexington and Concord. In 1776 he went with his unit to occupy the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga. He contracted typhus in November 1776 and was relieved of duty. As a result of his military service he developed a deep fondness for George Washington and strong allegiance to the Federalist Party.

After his military service, Haynes returned to the home of Deacon Rose and his family, where he continued with the family’s religious practices. They customarily had someone read a sermon on Saturday evenings as they prepared for the Sabbath. One evening Haynes read a manuscript he had prepared on John 3:3 (“You must be born again”). Deacon Rose asked if it was a sermon of George Whitefield or Samuel Davies or Isaac Watts. Haynes sheepishly admitted that he had written it himself. From that point, the family encouraged him to prepare for the ministry. He turned down an opportunity to attend Dartmouth College, and instead studied privately with ministers Daniel Farrand and William Bradford.

Haynes was licensed to preach on November 29, 1780, and five years later was ordained by the Litchfield County (Connecticut) Association of Ministers. He began his ministerial service as a founding member and supply pastor to a church in his hometown of Middle Granville. While he was serving that church a young white schoolteacher named Elizabeth Babbitt came to him with concerns about her spiritual condition. Haynes eventually became not just her spiritual counselor but her husband. They were married in 1783 and had ten children. Contrary to what we would expect, this inter-racial marriage did not seem to have been a source of scandal or any special concern.

After his ordination, Haynes served a church in Torrington, Connecticut for two years. From there he was called to a pastorate in Rutland, Vermont that was to last for thirty years. Vermont proved to be a challenging but fruitful field of service for Haynes. It was frontier territory where many new and unorthodox ways of thinking were competing with biblical Christianity. There was extensive circulation of Enlightenment thinking and materialistic sentiment. The skeptical writings of Thomas Paine were popular. Heretical forms of Christianity were also emerging. Lemuel Haynes emerged as a vigorous defender of biblical orthodoxy. One of his most famous published works was a satirical response to the preaching of Universalist leader Hosea Ballou. Middlebury College awarded Haynes an honorary Master of Arts in 1804, the first honorary degree bestowed upon an African American.

His long pastorate in Rutland ended in 1818. Although there is some speculation that racism may have played a part, the outward cause was his political views. He was an ardent supporter of the Federalist Party, and he apparently became more outspoken about his political opinions than was wise.

After leaving Rutland he served two more churches, first in Manchester, Vermont and then in South Granville, New York. His home in South Granville, where he lived for eleven years, is now a National Historic Landmark. He died in 1833 at the age of eighty.

There has been a revival of interest in Lemuel Haynes in recent years because of his status as an early African American minister. In addition to his theological writings, he also wrote about the injustice of slavery. He wrote, “Liberty is equally as precious to a black man, as to a white one, and bondage as equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other.” The basic source of information on Haynes is Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, published by his friend Timothy Mather Cooley in 1837. (The full text is available on Google books.) Recent studies are Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes by John Saillant (2003) and Black Preacher to White America: The Collected Writings of Lemuel Haynes by Richard Newman (1990).

A Personal Note: This will be my last article as Conference Historian. Because of a change in my professional situation, I have found it necessary to step down from this position. It has been a joy to be able to tell the stories of some great Congregationalists who have been nearly forgotten today. There are great riches to be discovered in our Congregational history. I hope that I may have inspired others to do their own exploration.