One night, Haynes read one of his own without credit. Given his adeptness at reading and reading and his deep concern for spiritual matters, the Rose family would often ask Haynes to read a portion of Scripture or a published sermon. An oft-told anecdote about Haynes concerns a scene of family devotions at the Rose household, where he was indentured. Not long after his conversion, he turned his followship of Christ and his intellectual bent into a serious endeavoring after writing and preaching. Haynes’s commitment to theology began in that chimney corner, and eventually he was born again. He has affectionately been called a “disciple of the chimney-corner,” as that is where he would spend most evenings after work reading and memorizing while other children were out playing or engaging in other diversions. Growing up in colonial-era Massachusetts, Haynes worked hard and studied hard, proving himself quite adept at intellectual pursuits despite mostly needing to self-teach. By the providential hand of God, however, young Lemuel was placed into a devoutly Christian home, where by all accounts, including his own, he was treated as a member of the family. Born July 18 in 1753 the son of a black man and a white woman, Haynes was abandoned by his parents in the home of a family friend who sold the infant Haynes into indentured servitude. Lemuel Haynes is one of the most significant figures in American (and Church) history that most people have never heard of.
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