Reverend Mr. Marshall gave this congregation over his signature two important certificates which follow:
This is to certify that upon examination into the experiences and characters of a number of Ethiopians, and adjacent to Savannah, it appears that God has brought them out of darkness into the light of the Gospel, and given them fellowship one with the other; believing it is the will of Christ, we have constituted them a church of Jesus Christ.
On January 19, 1788, he sent Bryan the following:
This is to certify, that the Ethiopian church of Jesus Christ at Savannah, have-called their beloved Andrew to the work of the ministry. We have examined into his qualifications, and believing it to be the will of the great head of the church, we have appointed him to preach the Gospel, and to administer the ordinances, as God in his providence may call.[202]
Out of the midst then of great persecutions Andrew Bryan became the official head of an established church.
The death of Jonathan Bryan, the master of Andrew Bryan, marked an epoch in the useful career of this pioneer preacher. By consent of the parties concerned, he purchased his freedom for the sum of fifty pounds. He then bought a lot in Yamacraw and built on it a residence near the rough building Sampson Bryan had built some time before. When the Bryan estate was finally divided, the lot on which Sampson had been permitted to build became the property of an attorney, who married a daughter of the deceased Mr. Bryan and received 12 pounds a year for it. In these readjustments there were no serious interruptions to the worship of Andrew Bryan's congregation. The seven hundred members worshiped not only without molestation, but in the presence, and with the approbation and encouragement of many of the white people.[203]
With this large membership Bryan needed but did not have a regular assistant. In his absence his brother Sampson preached for him. Bryan's plan was to divide his church when the membership became too large for him to serve it efficiently. This finally had to be done. This branch of the church was organized as the Second African Baptist Church of Savannah with Henry Francis, a slave of Colonel Leroy Hammond, as pastor. Francis showed such remarkable ability that some white men, who considered him unusual, purchased his freedom that he might devote all of his time to his chosen work. Not many years thereafter Bryan's church again reached the stage of having an unwieldy number and it was further divided by organizing in another part of the city the Third African Baptist Church.
Bryan exercised the greatest of care in his public and private obligations and manifested much interest in his family. In 1800 he wrote Dr. Rippon: "With much pleasure, I inform you, dear Sir, that I enjoy good health, and am strong in body, at the age of sixty-three years, and am blessed with a pious wife, whose freedom I have obtained, and an only daughter and child who is married to a free man, tho' she, and consequently under our laws, her seven children, five sons and two daughters, are slaves. By a kind Providence I am well provided for, as to worldly comforts, (tho' I have had very little given me as a minister) having a house and lot in this city, besides the land on which several buildings stand, for which I receive a small rent, and a fifty-six acre tract of land, with all necessary buildings, four miles in the country, and eight slaves; for whose education and happiness, I am enabled thro' mercy to provide."[204]
His church became in the course of time the beacon light in the Negro religious life of Georgia. From this center went other workers into the inviting fields of that State, until the Negro preacher became circumscribed during the thirties and forties by laws intended to prevent such disturbances as were caused by Nat Turner in starting an insurrection in Virginia. Andrew Bryan, however, did not live to see this. He passed away in 1812, respected by all who knew him and loved by his numerous followers.[205] He was succeeded by his nephew, Andrew Marshall, who served that church so long that former slaves still living have a recollection of his work among these people. In keeping with its loyalty to its ministers, this congregation boasts even today that in its long history it has had only a few ministers to serve it.