Cary, Lot

Cary, Lot, a colored Baptist minister, was born a slave about 1780, in Charles City county, Va. He joined the Baptist Church in 1807 at Richmond, and, having learned to read and write, he held meetings with the colored people so successfully that the Church licensed him to preach. By rigid economy he was enabled to purchase his own freedom and that of his two children in 1813; and in 1815, having become deeply interested in the missions to Africa, he succeeded in establishing the "Richmond African Missionary Society." Having been ordained, he sailed for Sierra Leone Jan. 23, 1821, in company with Colin Teague, another colored preacher. He established a school at Monrovia, and attempted to establish another at Grand Cape Mount. Having studied the diseases of the country, he was in 1824 appointed physician to the colony. In September, 1826, he was appointed to the office of vice-agent, and on Mr. Ashmum's return to America in 1828 he became acting governor of Liberia. An accidental explosion, Nov. 8, 1828, while he was engaged in manufacturing cartridges wherewith to defend the colony against the attacks of some slave-dealers, caused his death on the 10th of the same month. Sprague, Annals, 6:578.