author
Old Elizabeth
b. 1766
Born into slavery in Maryland, this early Black Methodist preacher left behind a brief but powerful life story shaped by faith, freedom, and public witness. Her memoir offers a rare first-person glimpse of spiritual life and resistance in early America.
1 Audiobook
Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman
by Old Elizabeth
About the author
Born in Maryland in 1766, Old Elizabeth was enslaved as a child and later separated from her family. Accounts of her life say she grew up in a Methodist household, heard the Bible regularly, and held tightly to religion through years of bondage.
She was freed around age 30 and later became known for preaching in Baltimore and traveling as a Methodist exhorter. That public ministry was unusual and courageous for a Black woman of her time, and it made her a notable religious voice in the early United States.
Her life story was published in Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman in 1863, when she was in her nineties. Short as it is, the memoir remains important as an early autobiographical account by a formerly enslaved Black woman.