Lott Cary was born a slave on a plantation in Charles City County, Virginia (southeast of Richmond), in 1780. His situation was such that his extended family lived together. His family attended a Baptist church and feared the Lord greatly. Later in his life, Lott remembered his grandmother Mahala as the one who greatly shaped his faith.
When he was twenty-four years old, Lott’s owner sent him to Richmond to work in a tobacco warehouse. While there, he began drinking and behaving in ways he was not proud of later. After two or three years, he began to feel conviction of his sin and was converted in the First Baptist Church after hearing a sermon about Nicodemus. He was baptized there and, intensely curious about the story of Nicodemus, made arrangements to learn to read so he could study the story himself.
His faith affected his work ethic, his work at the warehouse thrived, and he was promoted to supervisor of the warehouse. He was often tipped by tobacco buyers and he was allowed to keep and sell extra tobacco. This money was diligently saved and Lott soon had enough to purchase freedom for himself and his young family. The warehouse kept him on as a salaried employee.
Lott Cary felt the call to preach and began preaching to slaves around the Richmond area. People of all races who attended his sermons called them among the most moving they had ever heard.
Feeling an increasing call to go to Africa as a missionary, in 1815 Lott worked with other ministers to form a Baptist society for African missions. The Society saw the state of Liberia as a starting point for missions to the entire continent of Africa. They raised funds for a number of years and in 1821 Cary left as co-lead of a team to establish a mission in Monrovia, Liberia, where a number of freed blacks had resettled. Intending to preach, Cary found himself enmeshed in the political climate and in the practical matters of government – even to matters of training local doctors and to the self-defense of the small city from large bands of bandits and rebels. All of these duties were performed while he was active as the pastor of several churches in the city.
In 1826, Lott Cary was the acting governor of Liberia but was unfortunately killed with seven other people in an explosion when he was helping to prepare cartridges for the colony’s defense.
His untimely death left a great hole to fill, but because of his efforts in his day, Liberia remains a free nation and the National Missionary Baptist Convention continues to send missionaries around the world. There is also a large missions organization headquartered in Lanham, MD, named after him which sends multicultural teams into parts of Africa on a short-term basis for purposes of evangelism, health, anti-human trafficking, and disaster response.
https://mbcpathway.com/2021/02/25/lott-cary-former-slave-becomes-first-baptist-missionary-to-africa/
https://www.imb.org/2018/08/28/missionaries-you-should-know-lott-cary/
