George S. Brown › Hymnals

Rev. George S. Brown, was a free African American, born in 1801, in Newport, Rhode Island. He moved at a young age to Connecticut and by the early 1830's he found himself in the Kingsbury, N. Y. area, where he was subsequently converted, first becoming a Baptist and then a Methodist Episcopal, which he remained until his death in 1886 in Glens Falls, NY.

He felt a call to preach and was eventually granted, first, licenses to exhort, then a license to preach in 1833, becoming the first African American pastor in the former Troy Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He then began to experience a call to go to Liberia as a missionary and he served there from late 1836-1843, when he returned to the United States. The basic words of the hymn "Hallelujah to Jesus" were recorded in his journal which was published in 1849.

In 1855 he was in Vermont and organized the Wolcott United Methodist church; the following year he oversaw the construction of their church building. As far as we have been able to determine, this is the only White United Methodist church in the country which was organized by an African American, who then oversaw the construction of the church. e served there for three years, then due to failing health returned to the Glens Falls area of New York, where, for the most part, he lived out the remainder of his life.

Rev. Patricia J. Thompson, Historian for the Wolcott UMC and the New England Conference f the United Methodist Church, Co-pastor of the Wolcott UMC (email to Hymnary)