George Liele (c. 1750-1828) was the first Black Baptist minister in the United States and the first Baptist missionary from America to another country (Jamaica). As he writes in a letter to John Rippon in London, dated 18 December 1791 (published in the Baptist Annual Register, vol. 1 [1790-93], pp. 332-37), he was born in Virginia and then taken to Georgia, where he was converted in 1773 through the ministry of the Rev. Matthew Moore in Burke County. His desire to minister to the other enslaved persons on the plantation and elsewhere was quickly noted, and in 1775 Leile was ordained a Baptist minister. After working with enslaved persons in Brunton and at Yamacraw, both near Savannah, Georgia, his master, Henry Sharp, granted Leile his freedom. Jonathan Bryan, whose plantation was not far from Savannah, had already been instrumental in allowing those among his enslaved persons who had been converted to meet for worship, and through Leile’s ministry his successor, Andrew Bryan, was converted at that time. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Leile, like his then deceased master, sided with the British, and thus he evacuated with his family to Jamaica as an indentured servant. He soon regained his freedom and established churches in Jamaica, remaining there (he supported himself by farming and a delivery business, not through his churches) until his death in 1828. Leile’s ministry in Jamaica was very successful, establishing numerous churches and leading to some 8000 Baptists by 1814. His work preceded that of the more famous Baptist missionary, William Carey, by a decade.