London Ferrill, also spelled Ferrell, (1789–October 12, 1854) was a former enslaved man and carpenter from Virginia who became the second preacher of the First African Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, serving from 1823 to 1854.
London was born into slavery in 1789 in Hanover County, Virginia, where Richard Ferrill, an English immigrant, enslaved his mother.
[1][2] As noted by Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family (1999), a study of the interracial relationships among his ancestors, mixed-race enslaved people were frequently given names that distinguished them from the others.
[1] As a young man, Ferrill married a free black woman named Rodah Hood, who was also of mixed race.
[4] A few years after Rodah died in 1833 during a major cholera epidemic in Lexington, Ferrill adopted two orphaned children, siblings Eleazer and Elizabeth Jackson.
[6] In 1823, the Trustees of Lexington formally appointed Ferrill as the preacher for the First African Baptist Church to succeed the aging founder, Peter Durrett.
White leaders initiated a legislative petition to permit him to remain in the state in response to a threat from rivals competing for control of the black church.
Five hundred of the city's total 7,000 population died, including his wife Rodah[1] and nearly one-third of the congregation of Christ Church Episcopal.
By 1850, the First African Baptist Church had 1,820 members, both enslaved and free peoples, and was the largest congregation, black or white, in the state.
[2] In 2010, Christ Church Cathedral held a special joint service with First African Baptist to commemorate Ferrill, at which both choirs sang.