Traveling in Kentucky about this time, Abdy was favorably impressed with that class of Negroes who though originally slaves saved sufficient from their earnings to purchase their freedom and provide for the education of their children.[2] [Footnote 1: In 1830 one-twelfth of the population of Lexington consisted of free persons of color, who since 1822 had had a Baptist church served by a member of their own race and a school in which thirty-two of their children were taught by a white man from Tennessee.

He had pledged himself to devote the rest of his life to the uplift of his colored brethren.

One of these free Negroes in Lexington had accumulated wealth to the amount of $20,000.

In Louisville, also a center of free colored population, efforts were being made to educate ambitious Negroes.

Travelers noted that colored schools were found there generations before the Civil War and mentioned the intelligent and properly speaking colored preachers, who were bought and supported by their congregations.