Francis Burns
Francis Burns [1]
a colored bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa, was born in Albany, N. Y., December 5, 1809. His parents were so poor that at five years of age he was indentured as a servant. At fifteen he was converted, and soon after entered the Lexington Heights Academy to obtain the education necessary to fit him for the ministry. After serving as an exhorter and local preacher, he was appointed to the Mission in Liberia, Africa, in 1894, and landed in Monrovia October 18th. The first post ala signed him was as a teacher at Cape Palmas, under Rev. A. D. Williams. In 1838 he joined the Liberia Mission Conference; from 1840 to 1842 was stationed as assistant on the Bassa Circuit; in 1843, ‘ 44, Monrovia; was ordained deacon at Brooklyn, New York, in the morning, and elder at New York in the afternoon, in the Mulberry Street church, on the 16th of June, 1844, by Bishop E. S. Janes; returned to Liberia the same year, and at the next session of the Conference was appointed presiding elder of the Cape Palmas District; in 1851, by the direct order of the Board in New York, he was removed to Monrovia to open the Monrovia Academy and act as superintendent of the Mission. On the 14th of October, 1858, he was ordained at Perry, Wyoming county, New York, by the Rev. Bishops Janes and Baker, at the session of the Genesee Conference, according to the provision made by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States held in 1856, to the office and work of a missionary bishop. He returned to Liberia during that year, and for nearly five years Bishop Burns devoted himself unceasingly in behalf of the Church, until advised by his physician to return to America. The voyage did not benefit him; and he died in Baltimore, Md., April 19, 1863. See in Minutes of Conferences, 1863, p. 237; Report of Miss. So. of M. E. Church, 1864.
