The REV. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman

Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813-1872) was an African American abolitionist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Loguen was born into slavery in Davidson County, Tennessee, the son of a white man, David Logue, and a slave named Cherry. At age 21, he successfully escaped bondage on his second attempt, stealing his master's horse and following the Underground Railroad north, finally crossing into Canada. He studied at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, opened schools for black children in Utica, New York and Syracuse, New York, and married. Loguen became an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and took the middle name Wesley after John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement. He held various church posts and was appointed bishop in 1868. Loguen became a popular abolitionist speaker and authored an autobiography, The Rev. J. W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman: A Narrative of Real Life (1859).