Mildred was also the mother of six other boys after Henry.

Though he never knew his father, Bibb was told that he was the son of a white man named James Bibb. He spent the rest of his recorded life preaching throughout the eastern United States.īibb begins his narrative by recalling his birth in 1815 to a slave woman named Mildred Jackson. During the Civil War, he served as an army chaplain, working his way up the ranks to colonel, and in 1867 the Philadelphia Annual Conference reversed their previous decision and welcomed him back into their conference. He eventually helped organize the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, with which he remained affiliated for the duration of his life. Matlack continued to preach anyway, even under threat of expulsion, and in 1839 he was ordained a junior preacher in Massachusetts. He was a member of and preacher in the Union Church in Philadelphia and was recommended to join the Philadelphia Annual Conference, but because of his abolitionist beliefs, his application was rejected and he was removed from the Local Preachers' Association. Matlack, author of the introduction to Bibb's Narrative, was born on April 28th, 1816, in Baltimore. He was also the founding director of a Canadian black colonization project, the Refugee Home Society. Bibb helped create Canada's first black newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive a publication that worked to convince African slaves to settle in Canada. In 1849 he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave. In 1842, Bibb began lecturing on slavery and became a well known African American activist. Henry Bibb was married twice, once before his escape to a slave named Malinda, and again after his escape to a woman named Mary Miles.

His father was state senator James Bibb, and his mother was a slave named Mildred Jackson who worked for Willard Gatewood. Henry Bibb (1815-1854) was born in Shelby County, Kentucky.

An american slave