Summary

William Ellis Foy was a black Free Will Baptist minister who received dramatic divine visions in 1842 and shared them with packed audiences across New England during the height of the Millerite movement. Seventh-day Adventists hold that he was the first of three individuals to receive prophetic visions during this era, followed by Hazen Foss and Ellen G. White. A man of remarkable courage, Foy overcame the racial prejudice of antebellum America to faithfully share his extraordinary visions with audiences of thousands, published an account of them in 1845, and continued a productive Christian ministry for half a century. Ellen White herself heard Foy lecture, purchased his pamphlet, and later testified that his visions matched her own.

Early Life in Maine

William Ellis Foy (also spelled “Foye”) was born sometime around 1818 to black parents Joseph and Elizabeth (Betsey) Foy in Kennebec County, Maine, just north of Augusta. The Foys owned a large plot of land in the country and provided for their needs by farming it. William had three younger brothers and one sister.

When Foy was around fifteen, his family moved to nearby Palermo, Maine. Frequent visits to the capital city of Augusta brought the teenager to the Free Will Baptist Church. Foy himself wrote that “In the year 1835, under the preaching of Elder Silas Curtis, I was led to inquire, what I should do to be saved.” Curtis (1804–1893), the church’s white pastor, was an able soulwinner and outspoken abolitionist who had cofounded the Free Will paper Morning Star in 1826. Curtis baptized Foy three months after his conversion. Around 1837, Foy married a woman named Ann.

Called to Ministry in Boston

Foy embraced Christianity during the Second Great Awakening. Not long after his conversion, Foy felt called to the ministry, and in 1840 he and his wife relocated to Boston so he could attend seminary. The Foys settled on the north slope of Beacon Hill, where most of the city’s 2,000 blacks resided. The Beacon Hill neighborhood was one of the nation’s centers of black achievement, with five black churches established on its north slope.

Boston was also a center for the Millerite movement. Joshua V. Himes’ Chardon Street Chapel served as the movement’s de facto headquarters. William Miller himself, in a letter to Himes, mentioned “those colored brethren, too, at Belknap St. with Christian hearts; Heaven, I hope, has stamped them as its favorites” — a warm reference to the black Millerites from First African Baptist Church, pastored by George Black, a man with whom Foy was close.

The First Vision — January 18, 1842

On the evening of January 18, 1842, William Foy was worshipping with fellow believers at the Twelfth Street Baptist Church. Foy writes that while the attendees were “engaged in solemn prayer…my soul was made happy in the love of God. I was immediately seized as in the agonies of death, and my breath left me; and it appeared to me that I was a spirit separate from this body.”

As testified by ten eyewitnesses, Foy was prostrate in this “inanimate condition” for two and a half hours. A physician, Henry Cummings, stated, “I was present with our brother at the time of his visions. I examined him, but could not find any appearance of life, except around the heart.”

In his published account, Foy details this first vision in just under 1,500 words. He is led by an angelic guide to a river with a mountain of water. The righteous in the crowd climb over the mountain and are transformed: their bodies are “made glorious” and they are given “pure and shining garments” and bright crowns. The wicked sink beneath the mountain. Foy then describes heaven, where he sees familiar faces among the redeemed. He concludes, “I immediately found myself again, in this lonely vale of tears.”

The Second Vision — February 4, 1842

Two and a half weeks later, at the African Methodist Episcopal Church on May Street, Foy had another ecstatic experience lasting twelve and a half hours. He writes, “While I was thus standing, I began to reflect on my disobedience; and while thus engaged, suddenly I heard a voice, as it were, in the spirit, speaking unto me. I immediately fell to the floor, and knew nothing about this body, until twelve hours and a half had passed away.”

In this vision, Foy stands on an earth that is “perfectly level,” with the sun shining as at noon. A cloud covers the sun, plunging the scene into darkness, and from the sky bursts a “flaming bar of fire.” The saints are lifted through the fiery bar while the wicked sink below. His guide charges Foy to “reveal those things which thou hast seen, and also warn thy fellow creatures, to flee from the wrath to come.” “I will go,” Foy responds.

Struggle and Obedience

Despite his promise, Foy initially struggled with the commission. He writes that he “was at first exceedingly unwilling so to do” because “the message was so different — and the manner in which the command was given, so different from any I had ever heard of, and knowing the prejudice against those of my color, it became very crossing.”

Two days later, J.B. Husted, white pastor of the Second Methodist Episcopal Church on Bromfield Street, requested that Foy speak on his visions at his church. With considerable trepidation, on February 7, Foy related what he had seen so eloquently that he was inundated with requests to speak. “I traveled three months delivering my message to crowded houses,” Foy recalled, “enjoying continual peace of mind.”

Importantly, Foy’s visions led him to join with the Millerites. He wrote, “Although before the Lord was pleased to show me these heavenly things, I was opposed to the doctrine of Jesus’ near approach, I am now looking for that event.”

Ellen White’s Eyewitness Account

Ellen White first met Foy during a lecture at Beethoven Hall in downtown Portland. She provides a memorable account of the experience, recalling Foy’s wife Ann’s anxiety during his presentations and how Ann would mouth the words along with her husband from the audience.

After the Great Disappointment, White attended a meeting where Foy was present while she spoke on her own visions. She recalled: “While I was talking I heard a shout, and he is a great, tall man, and the roof was rather low, and he jumped right up and down, and oh, he praised the Lord, praised the Lord. It was just what he had seen, just what he had seen.”

White described Foy as “a very tall man, slightly colored. But it was remarkable testimonies that he bore.”

The Third and Fourth Visions

Both White and pioneer historian J.N. Loughborough confirm that Foy had a third vision “near the close of the twenty-three hundred days” in 1844. In this vision, Foy was shown the pathway of the people of God through to the heavenly city, with three platforms or steps where people gathered and some disappeared. “This was the part of the vision that troubled him,” Loughborough writes.

Ellen White was adamant that Foy had a fourth vision as well, in Portland around 1844, recalling: “He was in a large congregation, very large. He fell right to the floor…and he had all these [visions] before I had them.”

Publication of Christian Experience

On January 3, 1845, Foy registered The Christian Experience of William E. Foy Together with the Two Visions He Received in the Months of January and February 1842. The twenty-four-page pamphlet was published by John and Charles Pearson, Millerite brothers who later became charter Seventh-day Adventists. The Pearsons wrote that “the visions of our brother, are certainly very remarkable, and when related by him in public assemblies, have been blessed of God to the awakening of sinners, reclaiming of backsliders, and the building up of the saints in the most holy faith.”

Foy concluded with steadfast faith: “I am now waiting for my coming Lord…I expect soon to see the tall and mighty angel. ‘Then shall I be satisfied, when I awake in his likeness.'”

Post-Millerite Ministry

After the Disappointment, Foy returned to the Free Will Baptist Church and embarked on decades of fruitful ministry. In March 1848, he signed a protest against slavery with 616 fellow Free Will Baptist ministers. He was ordained later that year and subsequently appointed to positions of leadership.

Foy ministered in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and organized a small church there. From late 1853 to early 1854, he preached a revival series in Sidney and Belgrade, Maine, leading approximately sixty people to Christ. In April 1858, he held a revival in Boothbay, Maine, and baptized twenty people. He also ministered briefly in Michigan, holding meetings in Detroit where he reported that “the Lord has appeared in great power. Backsliders have been reclaimed and sinners converted.”

In 1867, he organized a “Christian Church” with 25 members on Mount Desert Island. He settled in Plantation No. 7 near Sullivan, Maine, where local historian Leila A. Clark Johnson gathered that Foy “was esteemed and beloved.” The Maine Farmer of January 1873 reported that Foy “in one year and a half, made eleven quilts, one containing 3,454 squares and another with 650 squares, no two being alike; and besides this, he preaches six sermons a week.” He continued holding meetings into the 1890s.

Death

Foy died from chronic prostatitis and cystitis at his home in Plantation No. 7 on November 9, 1893. He was buried with his daughter Laura in Birch Tree Cemetery in Sullivan, Maine. Inscribed on his tombstone: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.”

Legacy

For over a century, Adventist tradition cast William Foy as a tragic figure who rejected the prophetic call. Pioneer historian J.N. Loughborough wrote that Foy “finally became exalted over the revelation, and thus lost his simplicity, hence the manifestation of this gift to him ceased, and soon after he sickened and died.”

Delbert W. Baker’s 1987 book The Unknown Prophet represented a watershed, uncovering that Foy did not get sick and die after his visions but had a productive Christian ministry of half a century longer. Baker disproved the prevailing notion that Foy rejected the divine mandate: Ellen White heard him lecture and asserted his visions were remarkable; Foy publicly shared his visions to thousands and published a pamphlet. Baker made the case that God had a specific purpose for Foy and Foy fulfilled it.

For many Seventh-day Adventists today, William Foy is evidence that God does not regard color, and that in one of the historically lowest periods for African Americans, God entrusted a black man with revelations for His advent people. William Foy is a visible representation of faithful blacks who have been a part of and helped shape the Advent movement from its very inception.

Source: Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, encyclopedia.adventist.org. Article: “Foy, William Ellis (1818–1893),” by Benjamin Baker.