Andrew Jackson Warner (1850- 1920):
Warner became a Bishop of the A.M.E. Church May 20th, 1908. Prior to his selection, he led churches in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. In 1890 while in Alabama, he was nominated as a candidate for the U.S. Congress from the 1st District of Alabama in 1890, a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention in St. Louis, Mo., in 1896, and a nominee for Governor of Alabama in 1898. The Warner Temple A.M.E. Zion Church in Wilmington, NC, is named in his honor.
His father, Reuben Warner, was a freeman, having purchased his freedom. His mother, Emily Warner, was a slave. Warner was born March 4, 1850. As a small boy he was janitor at the local white school. At thirteen years old (1863) he ran away to join the Union Army as a drummer boy and took part in the struggle at Fort Fisher, North Carolina. By the close of the war he had been promoted to Sergeant of Company C Ninth US Colored Troops from Ohio.
At the end of the war he returned to Kentucky. Unable to get the education he desired, he returned to Ohio and attended high school in Cincinnati, finishing at Wilberforce College. Warner went on to study law and became the leading attorney in the Bishop Hillery case [within the Kentucky Conference] in Hendersonville, KY. After the Hillery case he dedicated his life to the A.M.E.church.
*NKAA, Notable Kentucky African American Database
*The Kentucky African American Encylcopedia
*Era of progress and promise, 1863-1910 : the religious, moral, and educational development of the American Negro since his emancipation
*One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; or, The Centennial of African Methodism: Hood, J. W. (James Walker), 1831-1918.