Harry Hosier

Harry Hosier (c. 1750-1806), who was considered by some to be “the greatest orator in America” in the late 1700s, was born enslaved near Fayetteville, NC. While little is known about his early life, he met Francis Asbury sometime around 1780 and eventually became his servant and carriage driver. Although Hosier was illiterate, he was able to memorize long Bible passages as dictated by Asbury during their travels together. Soon, Hosier - known as “Black Harry” - became a preacher in his own right, delivering sermons to Black congregations while demanding the attention of white audiences alike with his emotional speeches. In 1784, he became the first Black preacher to give a sermon to a white congregation in Chapeltown, DE. That year, he was in attendance at the Christmas Conference where Asbury was ordained and the Methodist Church officially split from the Church of England. Hosier was never officially ordained by the Methodist Church and fell on hard times towards the end of his life. In 1791, he was excluded from the church before finding redemption in the years leading up to his death in 1806.

Hosier’s time as a preacher coincided with the substantial growth of Methodist and Baptist churches thanks in part to new-found African-American membership. Most of his meetings were rural and appealed to the common man. It is suspected that the term “Hoosier” in regards to residents of Indiana comes from Hosier’s congregation, who were sometimes ridiculed on account of Hosier’s race and the rugged spaces in which they met. Many of his followers settled on the Appalachian frontier and eventually found their way to Indiana, where it is suspected that the term took on a sense of endearment and the derogatory racial connotation was lost to time.