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Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex County, Delaware, in 1746. When he was sixteen, his owner sold him along with his mother and siblings to a neighboring farmer. That year the farmer kept Absalom, but sold his mother and siblings, and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he became a merchant. Absalom was allowed to attend Anthony Benezet's School where he learned to read and write. While still enslaved by Mr. Wynkop (who was a vestryman of Christ Church and later St. Peter's), Absalom married Mary King (an enslaved woman owned by S. King, a neighbor to the Wynkoops), on January 4, 1770. Rev. Jacob Duché performed the wedding ceremony.

By 1778 Absalom had purchased his wife's freedom so that their children would be free; he asked for aid by donations and loans. (According to colonial law, children took the status of their mother, so children born to slave women were born enslaved.) Absalom also wrote to his master seeking his own freedom, but was initially denied. In 1784, however, Wynkoop manumitted him, inspired by revolutionary ideals. Absalom took the surname "Jones" as an indication of his American identity.

Later Jones applied for his freedom for the second time and got released from slavery on October 1, 1784. After being released from slavery Absalom was ordained in  September in 1804. This made him the first black person to be ordained in America by a well-known religion.