Lemuel Haynes, born in West Hartford, CT, in 1753 to mixed-race parents, was indentured at the age of 5 months to a devout churchman and became an ardent student of the Bible. In 1785, he became the first ordained African American minister in the US and traveled throughout Vermont as an itinerant preacher. In 1787, he was called to minister to the Congregational community of the West Parish of Rutland, where the meetinghouse in which he preached for 30 years stood near this cemetery. An outstanding preacher and writer, he was well regarded as both churchman and author and was recognized as the first black minister to serve in white parishes of New England. An African American religious leader and antislavery supporter, he stressed interracial benevolence, and his sermons were distributed internationally, making him one of the first published African Americans. In 1775, he penned the poem “The Battle of Lexington,” recounting the opening skirmish of the American Revolution, and in response to the Declaration of Independence he wrote “Liberty Further Extended” in 1776, considered one of the most forceful Revolutionary-era arguments against slavery and one of the first authored by an African American. In 1804, he received an honorary Master’s Degree from Middlebury College, the first in the US granted to an African American, and he died in 1833.

Photo: Internet Archive

Photo: William Tefft Schwarz (courtesy of the Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)

Photo: Rev. Ronald Irick

Photo: Rev. Ronald Irick

Photo: Rev. Ronald Irick

West Rutland, Vermont · USA