John Glaucester was the founder of America’s first Black Presbyterian Church. Born around 1776, little is known of Glaucester’s life in the South. Presbyterian minister Gideon Blackburn gave Glaucester his freedom after converting the young man to Christianity and providing him with a thorough religious education.

Glaucester began preaching in small services in his home. During this period, the Methodist church was attracting far more Black parishioners than its Presbyterian counterparts. Nevertheless, Glaucester’s flock soon grew too big for his house, and in May of 1807, the First African Presbyterian Church was born.

Glaucester was an activist as well as a pastor, opposing the American Colonization Society and becoming a founding member of the Pennsylvania Augustine Society for the Education of People of Color in 1818. He died of tuberculosis in 1822, at the age of forty-six. At the time of his death, he was one of only two Presbyterian pastors in New York, but three of his four sons would become Presbyterian ministers themselves.