Hosier, Harry “Black Harry”
c.1750-1806 · Contribution: 1781-1806
Became the first Black Methodist preacher in America, delivering the first sermon by a Black person to a Methodist congregation in 1781 and the first by a Black person to an all-white congregation in 1784, and was widely regarded as one of the most gifted orators of his era despite being entirely illiterate
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Impact on the world
A formerly enslaved man who became Bishop Francis Asbury's traveling companion and carriage driver around 1780, Hosier proved able to memorize entire Bible passages verbatim after hearing them read aloud, and Asbury began training him as a preacher in his own right; his 1781 sermon “The Barren Fig Tree,” delivered at Adams Chapel in Fairfax County, Virginia, was the first recorded Methodist sermon by a Black American, and his 1784 sermon at Thomas Chapel in Chapeltown, Delaware, was the first delivered by a Black preacher to a white congregation. Declaration of Independence signer Dr. Benjamin Rush called him, allowing for his illiteracy, “the greatest orator in America,” and Methodist bishop Thomas Coke wrote that Hosier was “one of the best preachers in the world.” Hosier was present alongside Richard Allen, also profiled in this collection, at the 1784 Christmas Conference in Baltimore that formally organized the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, and he spent decades as a circuit-riding preacher from the Carolinas to New England, drawing crowds so large that some historians credit him as the namesake origin of the nickname “Hoosier” for residents of Indiana, though he was never formally ordained by the denomination he helped build.
Life & background
Born around 1750, likely near Fayetteville, North Carolina, and probably enslaved as a child, Hosier gained his freedom around the end of the American Revolution and met Bishop Francis Asbury around 1780, becoming his traveling preaching companion for over two decades. He preached across the Atlantic seaboard from the Carolinas to Massachusetts through the early 1800s and died in Philadelphia in May 1806, with a large mixed-race crowd attending his funeral procession.
Sources
- United Methodist Church (UMC.org); African American Registry; The Gospel Coalition
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