Richard Allen Research Paper

Richard Allen was born February 14, 1760. During this time period more than one million people, representing a population increase of significant proportions, were living in the thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast. disease, and infant mortality rates in the colonies were much lower than those in England, and life expectancy was considerably higher. Just under a quarter million blacks lived in the colonies, the slave numbers increased, along with the white population, through a combination of immigration, and natural increase. The colonies were part of an Atlantic trading network that linked them with England, Africa, and the West Indies. The pattern of commerce, called the Triangular Trade, involved the exchange of products from colonial farms, plantations, fisheries, and forests with England for manufactured goods and the West Indies for slaves, molasses, and sugar.# Richard Allen was born to a bi-racial mother and a pure African father. Allen, his parents and two other siblings were slaves on the plantation of Benjamin Chew. At approximately seven years of age, Allen and his family was sold to Stokley Sturgis, a wealthy plantation owner near Dover, Delaware. Soon after this , Mrs. Allen had three more children. Later, she and three
Shortly afterwards he became a Methodist Preacher and played a key role in forming the African Methodist Episcopal church. Though he started out as a traveling preacher Allen eventually settled at St. George’s church. After a while the number of Black members increased greatly, which resulted in the segregation of the church. As a result Allen and the majority of the black Methodists left St. George’s and organized The Free African Society on April 12, 1787. Allen served as the leader of Bethel church, and in 1816, invited delegates from other African-American churches shortly after which It became the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E. church).