The second part of the book, differing somewhat from the first, is equally as valuable. It contains an account of the Church in general, its location, laws, doctrines, statistics and almost every sort of information bearing on the life of those connected with this Church. Among these facts, too, the reader finds not only a religious history but an excellent account of the development of education among these people. In this respect, therefore, the editors have rendered the cause of education a service hardly less valuable than that to the Church.
The volume as a whole shows much progress. It is the best Negro Church encyclopedia hitherto produced. One may obtain here in succinct form an excellent ready reference work. The book is modestly given to the public as a beginning, but it has accomplished much for the race not only in the information which it contains but in demonstrating what a store of knowledge may be obtained through an effective organization. Just as the African Methodist Episcopal Church has gone to the expense of bringing out this valuable volume to publish to posterity the deeds of its fathers, so should every Negro organization address itself to the task of preserving a record of all of their connection, who have done something for the development of the country and the progress of their people.
Notes
Father Uncles of Baltimore
The following from the Brooklyn Tablet, January 13, 1917, will interest students of the Negro Church:
"Rev. Charles Randolph Uncles, of Baltimore, Maryland, received congratulatory messages from all parts of the country last month, the occasion being the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination. Father Uncles was the first colored man of the United States to be raised to the priesthood, and he has had a brilliant career during the quarter century that has elapsed since Cardinal Gibbons ordained him in the Baltimore Cathedral on December 19, 1891.
"Father Uncles has done much missionary work and is at present engaged in teaching Latin and French in Epiphany College, Walbrook, Maryland, the preparatory school for St. Joseph's Seminary, where young men are trained to carry on work among the negroes of the United States.
"Father Uncles was the first negro in this country to be ordained. He reached his goal after years of preliminary study which led to his taking a course in St. Joseph's and St. Mary's Seminaries. He was graduated with honors and went to Epiphany College as teacher as soon as he left St. Mary's. He has done much to put the negro missions on a thorough working basis, and he has the admiration of Cardinal Gibbons. Father Uncles was born in Baltimore November 6, 1859, and his parents and grandparents were free negroes. His father was a machinist and worked for years with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. His mother is still living.
"He was baptized at St. Francis Xavier's Church, Calvert and Pleasant streets, Baltimore, and there he recently said his jubilee Mass. He studied at St. Francis's parish school and in the public schools. He worked as printer and journalist from 1874 to 1879 and then as printer. In 1880 he began as teacher in the Baltimore county schools, and in 1883 entered St. Hyacinth's College, Quebec, to study. He returned to St. Joseph's Seminary in 1888."
The same paper said on this date in its editorial columns:
"Congratulations to Father Uncles, of Baltimore, a priest, a gentleman, a scholar—and a negro. He has just celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into the Order of Abel, Abraham and Melchizedek.
"Father Uncles was the first of his race in this country to be raised to the dignity of the priesthood. His was a unique position. The eyes of the American world were upon him. Though one of God's anointed, he was a "colored man," and thus more was demanded of him than of any of his white brothers. At the end of twenty-five years, he can, with his gentle good nature, laugh at the world's scrutiny.
"For Father Uncles is gentle—a gentleman. In conversation with him, in association with him, one never thought of the color of his body. The beautiful whiteness of his soul shone so in the kindly lightning of his eyes, the courtesy of his speech, the correctness of his manner.
"He was, and is, a scholar—not merely book-learned, for he was one of the first three in a class of sixty in Saint Mary's Seminary, but the man of parts that bespeak the student.
"Yet he is a negro—of that long-suffering race that we first damned into slavery and then freed into servitude. But a man's a man for a' that, and from time to time the negro is proving that. Father Uncles was a pioneer in that line. For emancipation's sake he will not object to this projection of himself upon America's mental screen."