Richard Allen, born in 1760 and died in 1831, founded Bethel AME Church. In 1783, he bought his and his brother's freedom from Stokeley Sturgis for 2,000 Continental dollars and bushels of corn, wheat, and salt. During the Revolutionary War, he delivered salt to General George Washington at Valley Forge. In 1793, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones loaded bodies onto a horse-drawn cart for burial during the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. The first Bethel AME Church was an old blacksmith shop purchased in 1794, and the facade of present-day Mother Bethel AME Church stands in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the first meeting of the American Society of Free Persons of Color at Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia in 1830, Allen declared, "This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free." Sarah Bass Allen, born in 1764 and died in 1849, was Richard Allen's wife and the founder of Daughters of the Conference. Jarena Lee, born in 1783 and died in 1864, was the first woman preacher in the Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.