The Right Rev. Terry Allen White, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, will speak Saturday, Oct. 12, at Grace Episcopal Church, 216 E. Sixth St., for a program on the Rev. A.H. McNeil. The program begins at 10:30 a.m.
Now in its third year in Hopkinsville, the McNeil program is sponsored by the diocese’s Racial Healing Commission. The public is invited to hear about the life and work of McNeil, an early Black religious leader in Hopkinsville.
Although his full name was Alexander Hamilton McNeil, he somehow became known as Aaron McNeil in Hopkinsville. Today the Aaron McNeil House, a nonprofit crisis relief agency, is run from the church building at Second and Liberty streets where he worked during his tenure in Hopkinsville.
McNeil was born Oct. 10, 1858, in North Carolina, and presumably began life enslaved, according to research by the Very Rev. Stephen Spicer, rector at Grace, and his wife, Amy Spicer.
He studied for four years at Hampton Normal and Agriculture Institute, which later became Hampton University in Virginia, and graduated in 1877. He was a school teacher, and in 1889 began studying theology at Howard University in Washington.
By the early 1890s, McNeil was in Hopkinsville. He was ordained a deacon in 1896 and became the first clergy at the Church of the Good Shepherd. It served as an Episcopal church and housed a school and library.
On Jan. 14, 1901, McNeil died of an apparent stroke. He was in his early 40s and was soon to be ordained an Episcopal priest.
McNeil’s time in Hopkinsville was relatively brief but his legacy is still evident today. He is buried at Union Benevolent Society Cemetery on Vine Street.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
