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Perry, Rev. Rufus L., was born a slave in Smith Co., Tenn., March 11, 1834. He learned to read and write in early life, which inspired him with an irrepressible abhorrence of slavery, and he ran away to Canada in August, 1852. He went to Windsor, opposite of Detroit, and by hard study soon became a schoolmaster among the large body of fugitives who had escaped from slavery.

He was hopefully converted in 1854, prepared for ministry at Kalamazoo Theological Seminary with the class of 1861, and was ordained as pastor of the Second Baptist church of Ann Arbor, Oct. 9, 1861, by a council, of which Rev. Samuel Cornelius was moderator, and Prof. James R. Boise clerk. He afterwards served as pastor at St. Catherines, Ontario and Buffalo, N.Y. In 1865 he entered upon a general missionary and educational work among the freedmen, and has, until the present, labored for the education, evangelization, and general elevation of his race, serving as superintendent of schools for freedmen, as editor of the Sunbeam, co-ordinate editor of the American Baptist, editor of the People’s Journal, and editor and publisher of the National Monitor. He was for ten years corresponding secretary of the consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, and he is at present corresponding secretary of the American Educational Association and the American Baptist Free Mission Society, and editor of the National Monitor, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

-Baptist Encyclopedia

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