Francis Burns

Francis Burns (1809–1863) was an American Methodist minister who served as a missionary in Liberia. He was the first Missionary Bishop, and the first African-American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church (elected in 1858). Birth, enslavement and early education Burns was born December 5, 1809 in Albany, New York. He was said to be "thoroughly African in his complexion." New York was still a slave state at this time. His parents were so poor, such that at the age of four they placed their son in service with a farmer in Greene County, New York. At the age of eight, he was indentured to a Mr. Atwood (a farmer) to learn the farming business. He was permitted to attend school with the other children of the neighborhood, during the winter season (which is when most early schools were open, the farm chores being fewer during the winter). Two years later, however, his health becoming poor, he was sent to the district school during the entire summer. Early religious life and ministry The Atwood family was respectable and eminently pious, living in Ashland, New York, in a house now owned by Samuel Creech. Burns attended the North Settlement Methodist Church, County Route 10 Ashland. Mrs. Atwood was a Methodist class-leader. One who knew her said she was "a holy and zealous woman." At fifteen years of age Francis was converted to the Christian faith under the influence of Miss Stewart, a white teacher, the daughter of a Baptist preacher. At seventeen Francis felt that God required him to preach. Yet he refrained from doing so because he was bound to his master until the age of twenty-one.