This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Jarena Lee preached across the northeastern United States for decades, a documented sustained itinerant career distinct from a brief or local ministry confined to a single congregation, often before mixed and sometimes hostile audiences, a documented reception distinct from a ministry that met no resistance at all. In 1836 she published The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a documented act of authorship distinct from a ministry that left behind no written record in her own words.
That published account is widely credited as the first spiritual autobiography published by an African American woman, a documented distinction distinct from an autobiography that followed an established genre already carrying other named women's work before it. She expanded it into a longer journal published in 1849, a documented second edition distinct from a single text left unrevised for the rest of her life.
That a woman refused the pulpit in 1809 for want of institutional provision went on to publish, decades later, the first spiritual autobiography credited to an African American woman, and then expanded it further still, marks Jarena Lee's authorship as a documented case where a ministry once dependent on one bishop's permission left behind a written record that needed no one's permission to endure.