Richard Allen portrait
James A. Handy, Scraps of African Methodist Episcopal History (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1902), Library of Congress, LCCN 73170114, lccn.loc.gov/73170114
Absalom Jones portrait
Raphaelle Peale, Portrait of Absalom Jones, 1810, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE, gift of Absalom Jones School, 1971, object number 1971-8, emuseum.delart.org/objects/10348/absalom-jones
The Preamble to the Articles of the Free African Society
pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h465t.html
Whereas, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, two men of the African race, who, for their religious life and conversation have obtained a good report among men, these persons, from a love to the people of their complexion whom they beheld with sorrow, because of their irreligious and uncivilized state, often communed together upon this painful and important subject in order to form some kind of religious society, but there being too few to be found under the like concern, and those who were, differed in their religious sentiments; with these circumstances they labored for some time, till it was proposed, after a serious communication of sentiments, that a society should be formed, without regard to religious tenets, provided, the persons lived an orderly and sober life, in order to support one another in sickness, and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, April 12, 1787