James Pennington

 The Fugitive Blacksmith

James Pennington was born into slavery in the Eastern Shore of Maryland around 1807.  He was apprenticed as a mason and later as a blacksmith.  After receiving a severe beating and witnessing his father receive an even more severe beating James made a dash for freedom at age 19, leaving behind his parents and eleven siblings.  He knew only to travel north and had a number of misadventures along the way – including being captured by bounty-seekers, whom he secured his freedom from by subtly mentioning that he had recently come into contact with a group of escaped slaves who were all suffering from smallpox.  This was clearly a lie, but it did the trick and James was released from his brief period of custody.

Later in his travels, starving and dehydrated, he came across a woman who informed him that he had finally reached Pennsylvania.  She connected him with the Quaker family of William and Phoebe Wright who, as was the habit of many Pennsylvania Quakers in that day, gave him shelter and medical care.  The Wrights taught him to read and write, and paid him a salary for his work.  They were also very likely the ones who nurtured the faith of the young man.

James later moved to New York, where he found modest work.  He lived frugally, and used his wages to pay tutors to increase his education.  He was later allowed to attend classes at Yale Divinity School, provided he sit at the back of the classroom and not ask questions.  He was not allowed to formally enroll in the school in the 1830s, and essentially “audited” the classes.  He was not allowed to receive a diploma, but completed his coursework and was ordained in the Congregational Church and called to pastor a small church on Long Island.  He later moved to accept a position at a church in New Haven, Connecticut.  One of his great delights was in conducting weddings for fugitive slaves.  In 1838, a young couple named Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass came to him asking to be married.  Since they had nothing at the time, James married them waiving the customary fee that was normally paid at the time.

During his time in Connecticut, he wrote a book in 1841 which is believed to be the first history of African Americans ever published, entitled “The Origin and History of the Colored People.”  In 1848, he completed his memoir “A Fugitive Blacksmith,” which was widely read both in Europe and the United States.  Pennington later traveled to Europe to raise money to purchase the freedom of American slaves and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg.  Pennington contributed to a number of periodicals advocating for the abolitionist cause.

In 1842, James preached a famous sermon entitled “Covenants Involving Moral Wrong Are Not Obligatory Upon Man.”  In this sermon, he argued that when man’s law requires people to participate in evil, then they must disobey and follow God’s Law.  He had two applications: 1.) Americans who enforce laws holding others in slavery were in violation of God’s Law, and 2.) Those who restored escaped slaves to masters were violating God’s Law which commands God’s people to shelter outcasts (Isaiah 16:3-4). 

Normally a pacifist, probably due to the Quaker influence in his young life, Rev. Pennington ended up helping to recruit black troops during the Civil War.  After the war, he helped nurture a number of congregations in the South and passed away in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1870 after a brief illness.

In 2016, Yale University proclaimed him to be Yale’s first black student and named a classroom in his honor.

Periodical E-mail from Christian History Institute

https://connecticuthistory.org/reverend-james-pennington-a-voice-for-freedom/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W.C._Pennington