Editing Absalom Jones (section)

== From Slavery to Freedom ==

Absalom Jones was born into slavery on November 6, 1746, in Sussex County, Delaware, brought to Philadelphia as a household slave when his master relocated. His determination to achieve literacy, acquiring spelling books and learning to read against the prohibitions that slavery imposed, demonstrated abilities that bondage could not entirely contain. His work in his master's store, and his entrepreneurial efforts during hours he could call his own, allowed him to accumulate the funds that freedom required.<ref name="nash">{{cite book |last=Nash |first=Gary B. |title=Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 |year=1988 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge}}</ref>

His purchase of his wife Mary's freedom in 1770 demonstrated priorities that placed family before self, his own freedom not achieved until 1784 when he was nearly forty years old. The decades of saving that these purchases required showed determination that obstacles could not diminish. His transition to freedom in Philadelphia, with its relatively large free Black community, provided opportunities that other locations could not match.<ref name="douglass"/>

His religious involvement at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, where he and Richard Allen served as lay preachers to Black congregants, established the partnership that would create independent Black churches. The incident in 1787 when white trustees pulled them and other Black worshipers from their knees during prayer precipitated withdrawal that led to separate institutional development. While Allen remained committed to Methodism, Jones pursued Episcopal affiliation that his congregation preferred.<ref name="nash"/>