It is not easy to follow the growth of the work of the Episcopal Church, for it is amazing to see how indifferent our forefathers were, and we are, to the accuracy of record of activities. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, there seem to have been no records at all in many of the communities, beyond such a general statement as this: “I have continued to instruct the Negroes of two plantations, and from the good evidently derived from such labors I am induced to wish that I may be enabled to extend my efforts to a much larger number of the same people.”
Mr. Bishop, late Secretary of the American Church Institute for Negroes, mentions seeing, in the register of the old Bruton Parish, thirty-three pages consecutively devoted to the entry of the baptisms of negro servants and children, extending from 1746 to 1797, and containing 1122 names. Numerous were the reports made to the Bishop of London by the missionaries from the mother Church, of the careful instruction of the servants, and of the care of the owners to bring them to baptism. There being no Bishops, of course confirmation was not in view. Both white and colored were admitted to the Holy Communion at the discretion of their rectors. What was true of Bruton Parish is more or less true of the parishes of the Colonies from Maryland to the Carolinas and Georgia.
Naturally the first separate congregations were formed in the northern Colonies. Dr. Bragg of Baltimore gives an interesting account of the organization, in 1791, of the first congregation of Negroes—St. Thomas’ Parish, Philadelphia—and of other parishes elsewhere. The white Methodists of that city, objecting to the intermingling of the races in their Church of St. George’s, set the Negroes apart. The latter withdrew in 1787, and formed a Benevolent Society of Negroes, which prospered. In 1791, the Society desiring to become a Church, bought a lot, erected a building which they called after St. Thomas, and, by an almost unanimous ballot, voted itself into the Episcopal Church upon three conditions named in their petition to Bishop White. These were: first, that they should be received as a body; secondly, that they should forever have local self-control; and thirdly, that one of their number should be chosen as lay-reader and, if found worthy, be regularly ordained as their minister. Bishop White accepted the conditions, and on July 17, 1794, St. Thomas’ Church was formally opened for Services. Absalom Jones was chosen for ordination, and ordained a deacon in 1795, and priest shortly after—the first Negro ordained in the Episcopal Church in America. Of Jones, Bishop White wrote upon the occasion of his death, “I do not record the event without a tender recollection of his eminent virtues, and of his pastoral fidelity.”
In 1819, the negro members of Trinity Parish, New York, under the leadership of Peter Williams and others, and with the consent of Bishop Hobart, united themselves in the new negro Church of St. Philip. The following year, Williams was ordained, and became the first negro rector in the Diocese. “There was a great educational need, and he was the man who led the successful movement for a Colored High School in those early days. When the parish was denied representation in the Diocesan Convention (the members) quietly elected as their representative to that body the Hon. John Jay of the white race who was their real and sympathetic representative until he had succeeded in reversing the policy.”
In June, 1824, St. James’ First African Church, Baltimore, was organized by the Rev. William Levington. On October 10, 1826, the corner-stone was laid, and on March 31, 1827, the congregation occupied their new church which was that day consecrated by Bishop Kemp. “It was a day of peculiar significance to the descendants of the African race for all times to come,” writes Dr. Bragg, “for it was the first occasion anywhere in the South, where a local branch of any of the existing white Churches had been initiated among the people of the African race, with all the powers of self-government, as well as with an educated pastor, of the same race as the congregation.” The young rector was ordained priest in Philadelphia in 1828 by Bishop White, and the parish was incorporated the following year.
That the association of free and slave Negroes did not move always in the paths of pleasantness, is illustrated by the opening of St. James’ to both classes, over the objection of the free. The earnest young rector seems to have been amply strong to compose the objectors, and to inspire them with a sense of duty to their less fortunate fellow-members. Among the fruits of his short ministry were the Rev. William Douglass, and the Rev. Eli Worthington Stokes, the former the first Negro to be ordained in Maryland (1836) and the latter the first to be ordained in St. James’ Church (1843).
In 1843 Christ Church for Negroes—the first colored church in New England—was organized in Providence, R. I., by the Rev. Mr. Crummell; and, in the following year, St. Luke’s, New Haven, Conn., by the Rev. Mr. Stokes. It will be recalled that both of these devoted negro priests later gave their lives as leaders of the Church in Liberia.
Chronologically, Calvary Church, Charleston, S. C., organized in 1849 by the Rev. Paul Trapier, was the next to be built especially for the Negroes, as also to relieve the congestion in the white churches of the city. Because of the law against the assemblage of Negroes alone, a few white members were enrolled and always in attendance. The building of the church was at once begun. An unsuccessful attempt was made to destroy the church under construction, Mr. Trapier calmly announcing to the mob, “You will tear it down only over my dead body.” After a public meeting at which the full purpose was explained, the building progressed peacefully, and the good work has continued to this time. Calvary Church bore the relation to the churches in Charleston that would now be defined by the term, a City Mission.
About 1850, St. Matthews, Detroit, Mich., was established under the leadership of the Rev. William C. Munro. The anti-Negro sentiment soon operated to the closing of its doors. The wave passing, it was again revived; but lived only a few years. Yet during its brief career, it served one purpose of supreme worth, for here the Rev. Theodore Holley, later Bishop of Haiti, received part of his training, and here he was ordained.
These parochial establishments—probably the only ones in America founded on so ambitious a scale—together with St. Stephen’s, Savannah, in 1856, represented the beginnings of the purely racial churches before the Civil War; the initiation, in most cases, of local self-government; and the models of those to come later.[5]