From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)
Jones, Edward "Ned"
(died: 1865) Rev. Edward "Ned" Jones is considered the first African American Methodist preacher in Kentucky. He began preaching around 1830 in the white Methodist Church at the corner of Clay and Nashville Streets in Hopkinsville.Ned was enslaved by William Fee Jones, a Presbyterian minister. The Methodist Church purchased Ned's freedom so he could preach to the enslaved. When he attempted to form an African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1856, he was accused of trying to incite an insurrection among the enslaveed and was jailed for three months. When released, Ned moved to Bowling Green, KY.
The Hopkinsville Colored AME Church was established by the Southern Methodists soon after the Civil War ended. Ned would return to Hopkinsville, where he preached to both whites and African Americans and became known as the most prominent preacher at Freeman's Chapel.
Rev. Edward "Ned" Jones was the husband of Anna B. Jones, and the grandfather of Kentucky native Bishop E. W. Lampton (1857-1910) of the AME Church of Greenville, MS.
For more see p. 240 in Counties of Christian and Trigg, Kentucky, by W. H. Perrin; and H. D. Slatter, "Bishop Lampton's grandmother dead," Baltimore Afro-American, 2/20/1909, p. 1.