People, Locations, Episodes

Henry B. Delany, North Carolina Bishop born

Henry Delany

*Henry Delany was born on this date in 1858. He was a Black minister and bishop.

Born in Saint Mary’s, Georgia, Both of Henry Beard Delany's parents were slaves.  His father, Thomas Delany, was a ship and house carpenter, and his mother, Sarah, was a house servant.  Delany grew up in Fernandina, Florida, where he received his earliest formal education.  He and his brothers also learned brick-laying and plastering trades from their father.  In 1881, Delany entered Saint Augustine’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he studied theology.

After graduating in 1885, he joined the college faculty until 1908.  He also married Nannie James Logan of Danville, Virginia, another St. Augustine’s faculty member who taught home economics and domestic science.  The couple had ten children, including Sarah Louise and Annie Elizabeth, who became famous with their 1993 joint autobiography Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.

Delany joined Raleigh’s Ambrose Episcopal Church and, in June 1889, was ordained a deacon of the church.  Three years later, he was ordained as a priest.  He steadily rose in the Episcopal Church hierarchy, becoming Archdeacon in 1908 and Bishop in 1918.

Delany also promoted education among North Carolina’s African American population.  He visited Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregations throughout the state, helping them organize schools for blacks.  He was also one of the few education advocates who worked to bring educational opportunities to black prisoners in local jails.  Because of his education work, Shaw University in Raleigh awarded Delany an honorary doctor of divinity degree in 1911. Delany designed Saint Augustine’s Chapel in 1895.  This chapel is the only surviving nineteenth-century building on the campus.  He also helped design Saint Agnes Hospital on St. Augustine’s campus in 1909.

Through the 1940s, this hospital was the only Black-owned hospital in North Carolina and the only one available to blacks in eastern North Carolina.  The boxer Jack Johnson died at Saint Agnes in 1946 after being taken there following an automobile accident.  Although not the main designer, Delany was the on-site architect and construction supervisor.  Delany was also an amateur astronomer. He is known for his contributions to architecture and for being the first African American bishop elected in North Carolina and the second in the United States.

Bishop Henry Beard Delany died in 1928 in his home on the Saint Augustine’s campus.  His funeral took place in the chapel he designed.