“R “is for Rosemond, James R. (1820 to 1902)

“R “is for Rosemond, James R. (1820 to 1902). Clergyman. Rosemond was born an enslaved person. He eventually was sold to a Greenville planter and lived with a family of White Methodists under whose influence he was baptized in 1844. The following year he was appointed a class leader in the Greenville Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1854 he was licensed to preach. Emancipated after the Civil War, Jim took the name of James R. Rosemond and gathered a group of Black Methodists to establish a separate congregation in Greenville. In 1868 he was ordained an elder and he eventually established fifty churches in the area stretching from Oconee to York Counties. Recognized as one of The pioneers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, James R. Rosemond was commonly referred to as Father Rosemond.