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Overview
1817-1894 Reverend Edmund Kelly was one of the first African Americans ordained in the state of Tennessee. He was the co-founder and first minister of the Mt. Lebanon Missionary Baptist Church. In 1847, his owner gave him permission to leave the state because she was having financial difficulties. For this privilege, he paid his owner $10 per month with money he earned working as an evangelist. In 1851, Kelly purchased the freedom of his wife, Paralee Walker, and their four children and settled in New Bedford, MA. In 1863, Kelly was part of a delegation of African American ministers who met with President Lincoln to get permission to cross the union lines to minister to the formerly enslaved. Kelly believed that the formerly enslaved should join the fight for their freedom. He wrote, “I sincerely trust the colored people will never wait to be drafted, but volunteer to a man…while the white people hazard their civil and political rights, the colored people lose both and their freedoms besides.” Kelly’s son, William, fought with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, joining the 180,000 formerly enslaved men who fought with the United States Colored Troops, including more than four hundred from Maury County. Kelly became famous because he proved that regular church-going African Americans, with little education, could become knowledgeable about the Bible. In 1866, he published, “Open Questions,” at his expense, for use in Sunday Schools and Bible Classes. After the contentious presidential election in 1876, laws were implemented to remove the political and economic gains made by the formerly enslaved during reconstruction. Kelly published the 'Appeal to Lovers of Freedom, Righteous Progress, and Christianity'. Kelly wrote, “…select and vote for such men only as are willing to guarantee to the colored people all of the rights embodied in the amendments; such being the result of the war.” Considered one of the greatest organizers of his day, Kelly traveled extensively, preaching and organizing churches in Virginia and Rhode Island in the late 1860s; then back in Maury County in 1872 to organize the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church and School in Spring Hill before returning to the east coast to organize churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Kelly died at age 77 and is buried with his family in New Bedford, MA. The African American Heritage Society placed an official Tennessee Historical Commission marker for Edmund Kelly at 211 East 8th Street. In 2024, Carte de visite (CDV) photograph of Edmund Kelly (Lot 287) was sold by the Fleischer Auction House in Columbus, Ohio. The estimated selling price was $1,750. The final sales price is unknown.
