Major Nelson was born enslaved near Columbia, Adair Co., Southern Kentucky in 1818. Around his fifteenth year he was licensed and ordained to preach in a white Methodist Episcopal Church. Nelson remained enslaved until Emancipation.  During this time he preached on a circuit of white congregations in Kentucky.  After the Civil War, Nelson joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  In an interview in 1899, Nelson had this to say about preaching, “I have been preaching for fifty-six years, and have preached as regularly as God has sent the years.  I have always gone where I was sent, and that without murmuring; and yet I have never been sent to a place where there was a church.  (I) have had to gather a congregation and build a house of worship.  But I have never left my post, nor failed.  I have had the dirk-knife and revolver put to my throat and head for preaching, but never suffered any injury…”