Elisha Winfield Green (1815 – 1893)
Green was a Baptist leader in Kentucky. For five years he was moderator of the Consolidated Baptist Education Association, and he promoted the establishment of what is now the Simons College of Kentucky. In 1867 Green was chosen as vice president of the Kentucky Negro Republican Party.
Green suffered from racial intolerance all his life. In 1883, when he was an elderly and respected minister, he was assaulted and beaten for failing to comply with a demand to give up his seat on a train.
At the age of 10, Elisha Green was purchased by the Dobbyn family. When Dobbyn died Green and his sister were sold in Washington at a sheriff’s sale on the Courthouse slave block. “When Mr. Dobbyns had been dead awhile, my old mistress married Mr. Walter Warder. My sister and four children and myself were sold in Washington, Mason County, Ky., at a sheriff’s sale. When we were put up to be sold, Mr. Oliver Kale refused to “cry” us off, and a man by the name of Charlie Ward supplied the place. “
In 1848 Green was given a license to preach at the First African Baptist Church in Paris, Kentucky, and later became a pastor in Maysville, Kentucky at the Bethel Baptist Church. In 1848, a group of white men loaned Green $850 (~$28,750 in 2022) to purchase his and his family’s freedom from Dobbyns. Green repaid the loan from his earnings as a preacher, and with his skills of chair caning, shoe repair and carpentry.