Gailliard, of Baltimore: Jacob Marsh, Edward Jackson, William Andrew,
of Attleborough, Penn.; Peter Spencer, of Wilmington, Del., and Peter
Cuffe, of Salem, N.J.--and these were the men who founded the African
Methodist Episcopal Church. Coker, of whom we shall hear more in
connection with Liberia, was elected bishop, but resigned in favor of
Allen, who served until his death in 1831.

In 1796 a congregation in New York consisting of James Varick and others
also withdrew from the main body of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and
in 1800 dedicated a house of worship. For a number of years it had the
oversight of the older organization, but after preliminary steps in
1820, on June 21, 1821, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
was formally organized. To the first conference came 19 preachers
representing 6 churches and 1,426 members. Varick was elected district
chairman, but soon afterwards was made bishop. The polity of this church
from the first differed somewhat from that of the A.M.E. denomination in
that representation of the laity was a prominent feature and there was
no bar to the ordination of women.

Of denominations other than the Baptist and the Methodist, the most
prominent in the earlier years was the Presbyterian, whose first Negro
ministers were John Gloucester and John Chavis. Gloucester owed his
training to the liberal tendencies that about 1800 were still strong in
eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and in 1810 took charge of the African
Presbyterian Church which in 1807 had been established in Philadelphia.
He was distinguished by a rich musical voice and the general dignity
of his life, and he himself became the father of four Presbyterian
ministers. Chavis had a very unusual career. After passing "through
a regular course of academic studies" at Washington Academy, now
Washington and Lee University, in 1801 he was commissioned by the