Unknown Maker, American

This tray serves as an unusual surface for an important painting of the Reverend Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833), the first Black man in the United States to be ordained a minister. Haynes advocated for abolition using biblical texts, and he is shown here passionately speaking in 1814 to a largely white crowd in New Haven, Connecticut, joined at the pulpit by the city’s mayor and the president of Yale University.

The artist or owner of the tray may have been an American or English abolitionist inspired by a biography published four years after the minister’s death. The book recounted Haynes’s 1814 speech at length, quoting one attendee as saying, “His sermon was rich in Scriptural thought, perfumed with holy unction, and abounded with striking illustrations. . . . It was so unexpected, and there was so much of truth and nature in it, that I believe I may literally say, hundreds were melted into tears.”