John Gregg Fee

John Gregg Fee (September 9, 1816 – January 11, 1901) was an abolitionist, minister and educator, the founder of the town of Berea, Kentucky, The Church of Christ, Union in Berea (1853), Berea College (1855), the first in the U.S. South with interracial and coeducational admissions, and late in his life another congregation that would become First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) 2 blocks from his first. (1890). During the American Civil War, Fee worked at Camp Nelson to have facilities constructed to support freedmen and their families, and to provide them with education and preaching where the formerly enslaved men who had joined the Union Army were taken to be mustered out in the last years of the Civil War. Early life and education Fee was born in Bracken County, Kentucky on September 9, 1816, the son of John Fee Jr., of Irish and Scots descent, and Sarah (Gregg) Fee, of Irish and English descent. His father inherited a bondsman who reached the term of his indenture. He then began to buy slaves, finally holding thirteen. Later he recognized more of its problems and invested in lands in free states, but held on to his slaves throughout his life and opposed his son's abolitionism. Following a conversion to the Christian faith at age 14, John Fee, Jr., wanted to join the Methodist Episcopal Church. His father encouraged him to wait, and a couple of years later they both joined the Presbyterian Church. He studied at Augusta College in Bracken County, Kentucky and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He then entered Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1842, where in studying for the ministry, he made lifelong friendships. The young Fee became a staunch abolitionist, vowing to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Career Fee returned to Kentucky, preaching against slavery, but found it difficult to find a permanent position, as there was widespread pro-slavery sentiment. He started in Lewis County, which had fewer slaveholders, so more people who supported his point of view. In the 1840s, he came into conflict with the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, which opposed his church's stance to refuse fellowship to slaveholders.