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Recalling Black pioneer Pastor Jehu Jones He was the first African American Lutheran pastor to be ordained in North America -- in 1832. When his primary mission - to serve as pastor in the newly created colony of Liberia - became impossible, Jehu Jones, Jr. founded a Lutheran congregation in Philadelphia in the early 1830s. At enormous personal sacrifice, he developed a church building that still exists in downtown Philadelphia. Yet without the unrelenting diligence of researchers like Karl Earl Johnson, a graduate of this Seminary, and the Rev. Richard Stewart, the Seminary's assistant professor of parish administration and communications, the building's whereabouts would likely have remained a mystery. During the same period he founded this church, St. Paul's Lutheran, Pastor Jones started other African American congregations in Gettysburg and Chambersburg, visiting more than 2,700 families. Due not only to the poverty of his Philadelphia congregation but also to the lack of support of the greater church of his day, the church building that was the fruit of his dream ended up being sold at a sheriff's auction. When he later sought support from the New York Synod to establish a Lutheran Congregation in New York City, a synod committee drafted a report attacking his ministry in Philadelphia. When the synod refused to grant Jones a hearing on the matter, he was forced to publish a pamphlet in his own defense. His peers sometimes suggested he might be better off becoming a Methodist minister, like others of his race. Jones insisted on staying true to his calling within the Lutheran Church. Now, the ministry and determination of Pastor Jehu Jones, Jr., will be recalled and celebrated February 22, during a 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon dedication of an official historical marker from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The festivities will hopefully be held in the building he established as a church, and which today is the home of the Mask and Wig Club of the University of Pennsylvania. (Final arrangements for the downtown event remain incomplete.)Because space within the building is so limited, a 5:30 p.m. reception, to which the public is invited, is planned to follow in the Seminary Library Rotunda. A free-will offering will benefit the Upsala/Wagner/LTSP Partnership, which supports the education of minority students who plan to become professional leaders in the church. Jehu Jones, Jr. (1786-1852) was born in Charleston, SC, and was named after his father, Jehu, Sr., a tailor who gained his freedom in 1798 and later owned an exclusive hotel in Charleston. Originally associated with the Episcopal Church, the younger Jones became a member of St. John's Lutheran Church in Charleston in the 1820s, and with the encouragement of that congregation's pastor, the Rev. John Bachman, Jones was ordained in 1832 by the New York Synod of the Lutheran Church to be a missionary to Liberia and to accompany freed slaves to that African nation. Upon returning to Charleston after his ordination, Jones was jailed briefly for violating South Carolina's law prohibiting the immigration of free Blacks. When support for the missionary work to Liberia failed to materialize, Jones eventually settled in Philadelphia, the largest city in the country at that time. In June, 1833, the Pennsylvania Ministerium resolved that Jones be appointed "to labour as a Missionary...among the coloured people in Philadelphia under the direction of our Ministers there." On February 16, 1834, the St. Paul's congregation he had founded in Philadelphia resolved to construct a church in the City and to solicit support from other Lutheran congregations. In June of that year, he purchased two lots on Quince Street in Philadelphia for constructing the church. Assisted by Pastors Philip Mayer of Philadelphia and Benjamin Keller of St. Michael's Church in Germantown, Jones that month laid the cornerstone for the building (only recently identified to be still standing at 310 South Quince Street). Though the congregation was made up of poor people, they and other supporters of the church had paid nearly 40 percent of the costs by the time the building was dedicated in 1836. Because the rest of the funding (about $1,300) wasn't obtained, the building was sold at a sheriff's auction in 1839. Jones continued to serve the congregation, which then met in Benezet hall, until 1851. In 1849, his intent to establish a church in New York City was met with the criticism of his Philadelphia ministry. Throughout his Philadelphia career, Jones was active in the social and political life of the city. In 1845, he organized a convention at Temperance Hall with the intent of uniting free Blacks to petition local authorities for civil rights. He and members of St. Paul's were active in the Moral Reform and Improvement Society, an association of African American Churches in the city dedicated to improving the social conditions of the Black community. Karl Johnson, the Seminary-based researcher who discovered the whereabouts of the Quince Street church, said, "His (Jones's) love for the (Lutheran) church is evident in his work and his writings. Perhaps most important, he never stopped believing that the proclamation of the Gospel should not and would not be hindered by racial prejudice or financial obstacles." While no image of the African-American pioneer pastor is known to exist, an old photo of his older brother, Edward, was discovered at Amherst College and used as the basis for a rendering of an imagined likeness of Jehu Jones that was displayed at the recent ELCA Assembly in Philadelphia. After the sheriff's auction, Jones's original building was used for dissecting in the mid-1800s, then as a stable, and finally it was purchased in the 1890s by the Mask and Wig Club and renovated. A foyer containing a staircase was then added to the front of the building, and a stage was added for the club's theatrical presentations. The building was placed on the National Register for Historic Places in 1979, although at that time the connections to African American Lutheranism were unknown. The cornerstone of St. Paul's remains in the foyer by the entrance to the undercroft of the building. Information for this article was taken from "Jehu Jones (1786-1852): The First African American Lutheran Minister," Lutheran Quarterly 10 (1996): 424-43. Caption: A view of the building today established in 1834 as St. Paul Church - by Pastor Jehu Jones, Jr. The St. Paul cornerstone as it looks today.