Jehu Jones

Jehu Jones, Jr. ( born September 4, 1786 in Charleston, South Carolina, † September 28, 1852 in Centerville, New Jersey) was an American Lutheran clergyman.

Importance

Jehu Jones was the first African American ordained Lutheran, founded one of the first African-American Lutheran congregations in the United States and participated actively in the improvement of the social well-being of African Americans. The calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America remembers on November 24, the parish priest, together with Justus Falckner and William Alfred Passavant. Jones is also the brother of the missionary Edward Jones, the first African American college graduate who later emigrated to Freetown in Sierra Leone and the first director of Fourah Bay College was.

Life

Jones was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and after his father, Jehu Jones Sr., named, a tailor who had reached his release in 1798, and later a successful hotel in Charleston possessed. Jehu Jones was of mixed ethnicity, and thus could be a member of the privileged Mulattenelite Charleston. Jehu Jones Jr. was originally connected with the Episcopal Church of the United States, but joined in the 1820s the Lutheran Church. He belonged to the municipality of John Bachman. Later he took over the post of a missionary in Liberia, where he helped build this new nation with freed slaves. After his ordination he returned to Charleston, where he was briefly detained because he had a state law South Carolina violated the ban on the immigration of free Africans.

Finally he settled in Philadelphia. There he would be working as a missionary for the African American population of Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, he and his congregation decided to build a church, with the support of other Lutheran congregations in the region. They laid the foundation stone for its new building, which still stands at number 310 on the South Quince Street in Philadelphia. When the building was inaugurated in 1836, his church had financed nearly 40 % of the construction costs. Since the remaining costs could not be applied, the building was auctioned in 1839.

Jones remained active in the political scene in Philadelphia. In 1845 he helped to organize a meeting to unite freed African Americans for civil rights petition. He and his community were also in society working for moral reform and improvement, a group of African-American churches, whose aim was to improve the social conditions for African Americans in Philadelphia. He served his community until 1851 and died the following year.

Source

• African American Registry: From slavery to ministry, Jehu Jones, source of this page is:
• Marvin Andrew McMickle: An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage, Judson Press, Copyright 2002, ISBN 0-817014-02-0