1 Chapter 1
Early Life
Dr. Owen A. Troy Sr. was born on November 3rd, 1899 to parents Theodore Wellington Troy and Estella Juliet Washington. An era of rapid change in the United States, this young African American scholar contended with a developing racial envir
onment resulting in challenges in access to education and employment, and an evolving Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Troy family brought to the Seventh-day Adventist Church one of its greatest scholars, a man who revolutionized pastorship, trailblazed the pathway to higher education, and helped mark the African American contribution to the church through his leadership roles.
Beginning life in the city of Los Angeles, California was far from insignificant. California, by the 1900s, was bustling with diversity. A mix of Mexican and American inhabitants, infused with waves of immigrants landing on the western shores as well as those who travelled overland west, the city rapidly grew in both size and enterprise. Theodore and Estella Troy were two of over 12,000 African Americans who settled in the urban areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland by 1910, in what is termed the Great Migration. The state of California’s African American population increased by over 525% between 1860 and 1910, representing a rapidly developing community amongst the three principal urban centers.[1] Despite San Francisco holding the reputation as the “most cosmopolitan and sophisticated African American community in the West,” it was the Troy’s own city, Los Angeles, that had the largest African American population.[2]
Little is known about Theodore and Estella Troy, except that they attended Tougaloo College in Mississippi and moved to Los Angeles where Theodore became the city’s first Black postman.[3] It is likely that the couple were Protestants prior to their transfer West, since Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi was founded in 1869 by the American Missionary Association of New York. Intended to provide education for former slaves, the missionaries received funding from the Freedmen’s Bureau to established over five hundred schools across the South.[4] Tougaloo College focused on producing teachers to combat illiteracy rates amongst African Americans and operated out of an elaborate, former plantation.[5] After moving to California, the couple purchased land from an Irish farmer, James Furlong, for $750.[6] Located near Vernon, in Los Angeles, their small plot of land was amongst a neighborhood of two hundred other emerging homes, all owned by African American families as a result of the city’s redlining restrictions.[7] Consequently, as one of the only districts in Los Angeles open for Black purchase, the community grew rapidly and attracted a business-minded, wealthy population.[8]
For the young Owen Troy Sr. growing up in, what Chandler Owen of The Messenger called, a “veritable little Harlem in Los Angeles,” the close-knit African American community was a defining force in his personal g