Jehu Jones was recruited by John Bachman to become a missionary to Liberia in the late 1820s. Jones went to New York where he was ordained by the New York Ministerium as the first African-American Lutheran pastor. He did not go to Africa, but rather to Philadelphia where he founded three African American congregations, including St. Paul's at 131 South Quince Street, Philadelphia. Insufficiently endowed, and receiving no financial support from the synod, they eventually lost the building to creditors. That, together with his civil rights activism, apparently discredited him in the church.

Jones came from a comparatively wealthy freedman family in Charleston. His father owned a hotel and was able to assist both Jehu and his brother, Edward, to receive educations in the North. Edward graduated from Amhurst College and was one of the first African Americans to receive a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college in America. Edward did go to Sierra Leone, Africa, as an Episcopal Priest and missionary. He died in England.

Source: ELCA timeline.