This simple wood and leather money box belonged to Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and one of the most important religious figures in American history.

Richard Allen is born enslaved in 1760. Separated at an early age from his family through sale, Allen and his brother grow up at the Delaware plantation of Stokeley Sturgis. After his religious awakening, Sturgis was convinced to allow Allen and his brother to purchase their freedom by 1780.

Allen pursued a life in the ministry, and in 1784, during the Methodist Episcopal Christmas Conference, earned his qualification as a preacher. Two years later, he began preaching at Philadelphia’s St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, leading worship services during early morning hours when the church allowed African Americans through its doors. Reacting to a segregated seating gallery for blacks there, Allen established the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church by 1793, and was ordained the new AME denomination’s first bishop in 1816. Allen served as Bishop of the AME Church until his death in 1831.

Bishop Allen and his second wife, Sara, provided shelter for those escaping enslavement along the Underground Railroad and, a year before his death, helped to organize the first Negro Convention. The denomination that Bishop Allen founded continued to grow after his death.  Spreading into African American communities across the country, it served as a foundation for many social movements throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the twenty-first century.

The money box pictured above is now in the collection of theSmithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visitors to the museum can view this object in the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition.

Credits and Sources:

2013.56.1 - Money box used by Bishop Richard Allen, early 19th century. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Gift of the Bishop Frederick and Mrs. Artishia Jordan Scholarship Fund.

NYPL-1232364 - Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, 1st Bishop of the African M. E. Church, 1891. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library; No known restrictions. 

Allen, Richard. The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. Philadelphia: F. Ford and M.A. Riply, 1880.

"Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Philadelphia." Accessed January 8, 2016. http://www.motherbethel.org/content.php?cid=18. 

2013.56.1 - Money box used by Bishop Richard Allen, early 19th century. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Gift of the Bishop Frederick and Mrs. Artishia Jordan Scholarship Fund.

NYPL-1232364 - Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, 1st Bishop of the African M. E. Church, 1891. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library; No known restrictions. 

Allen, Richard. The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. Philadelphia: F. Ford and M.A. Riply, 1880.

"Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Philadelphia." Accessed January 8, 2016. http://www.motherbethel.org/content.php?cid=18.