Although educated for the times, Arnett lacked
opportunities, and so began his working life do-
ing what many others like him were doing: load-
ing and unloading wagons; working on the
steamboats that plied the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers; and waiting on tables in various hotels.
But his life was to change drastically.

In March, 1858, Arnett was diagnosed as
having a tumor on his leg and, as dictated by
the primitive medicine of the day, his leg was
amputated. He could no longer do hard labor;
he had to find work that would not require two
good legs.

That same year, on May 25, 1858, Arnett
married Mary Louisa Gordon. Over the years
to come, the couple would have seven chil-
dren-five boys and two girls.

During the 1800s and almost into the twen-
tieth century, teachers did not necessarily have
to attend and graduate from a school that
taught education. Many communities, after
testing a young person who wished to become
a teacher, would issue that person a teaching
certificate and set him or her to work in the
local school. Arnett, unable to do heavy work
or to fight in the Civil War that was then rag-
ing, was able to obtain such a teaching certifi-
cate on December 19, 1863. For a brief period,
he taught in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, as
the county's first black teacher. From 1864 to
1865, he taught and held the position of prin-
cipal in a school in Washington, D.C., before
returning to his hometown of Brownsville to
teach until 1867.

In 1856, Arnett had followed his father into
the African Methodist Episcopal Church and,
while in Washington, D.C., had become active
in the church. On March 30, 1865, while at-
tending the Baltimore Annual Conference of
the church in Washington, Arnett was licensed
to preach. Upon returning to his home in Penn-
sylvania, he decided to devote his life to the
church, giving up teaching and taking up the
ministry full time. He received his first appoint-
ment from the church on April 19, 1867, as
minister of the Walnut Hill AME Church in
Ohio.

In the years that followed, Arnett rose
within the church hierarchy from deacon all
the way to bishop, the highest office of the AME
Church. Arnett traveled from ministry to min-
istry throughout Ohio and Illinois with his wife
and children. Upon assuming the office of
bishop, he presided over the Seventh Episco-
pal District of South Carolina from 1888 to
1892; the Fourth Episcopal District ( Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa, and northwestern states) from
1892 to 1900; the Third Episcopal District
( Ohio, California, and Pittsburgh) from 1900
to 1904; and the First Episcopal District from
1904 to 1906.

During the years of his ministry, Arnett was
active both socially and politically. He founded
a number of fraternal organizations for African
American men and women and spoke elo-
quently on both religious issues and the politi-
cal issue of black equality. In 1885, he was
elected to the legislature of Ohio by a narrow
margin of eight votes, becoming the first black
state legislator elected to represent a majority
white constituency. During his tenure in office,
1886-1887, he helped legislate against Ohio's
"Black Laws," which restricted blacks socially
and politically. He also met William McKinley,
Jr., who would go on to be elected president.
Arnett later presented McKinley with the Bible
that was used when McKinley took his oath of
office in 1897. During President McKinley's
administration ( 1897-1901), Arnett was said
to be the most "powerful individual Negro at
the White House" ( Logan and Winston18).

In his later years, Arnett served on a num-
ber of religious and educational councils, in
addition to overseeing his bishopric. Among
other things, he was appointed director of Payne
Theological Seminary at Wilberforce, Ohio. He
built a home at Wilberforce University that was
called "Tawawa Chimney Corner" because it
was located near Tawawa Springs, named by
early Native Americans. Arnett died there of
uremia at the age of 68, on October 9, 1906.

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