General Assembly of the Presbyterians as a missionary to the Negroes. He
worked with increasing reputation until Nat Turner's insurrection caused
the North Carolina legislature in 1832 to pass an act silencing all
Negro preachers. Then in Wake County and elsewhere he conducted schools
for white boys until his death in 1838. In these early years distinction
also attaches to Lemuel Haynes, a Revolutionary patriot and the first
Negro preacher of the Congregational denomination. In 1785 he became the
pastor of a white congregation in Torrington, Conn., and in 1818 began
to serve another in Manchester, N.H.

After the church the strongest organization among Negroes has
undoubtedly been that of secret societies commonly known as "lodges."
The benefit societies were not necessarily secret and call for separate
consideration. On March 6, 1775, an army lodge attached to one of the
regiments stationed under General Gage in or near Boston initiated
Prince Hall and fourteen other colored men into the mysteries of
Freemasonry.[1] These fifteen men on March 2, 1784, applied to the Grand
Lodge of England for a warrant. This was issued to "African Lodge, No.
459," with Prince Hall as master, September 29, 1784. Various delays and
misadventures befell the warrant, however, so that it was not actually
received before April 29, 1787. The lodge was then duly organized May 6.
From this beginning developed the idea of Masonry among the Negroes of
America. As early as 1792 Hall was formally styled Grand Master, and in
1797 he issued a license to thirteen Negroes to "assemble and work" as
a lodge in Philadelphia; and there was also at this time a lodge in
Providence. Thus developed in 1808 the "African Grand Lodge" of Boston,
afterwards known as "Prince Hall Lodge of Massachusetts"; the second
Grand Lodge, called the "First Independent African Grand Lodge of North
America in and for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," organized in 1815;
and the "Hiram Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania."