APPENDIX
NOTE 1
(Chapter VI, page 159)
The Hospital was the result of the devoted work of the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Hunter, the latter making this her special charge, raising most of the funds, and keeping them separate from those of the School.
The earlier Principals of the School itself each performed distinctive services which won the affection and gratitude of the Church in North Carolina. The Rev. Dr. J. Brinton Smith founded the school in his five years of service from 1867 to 1872. The Rev. Dr. John E. C. Smede nourished it through the most difficult reconstruction period, 1872 to 1884, when tension was high, and when sympathy between North and South and White and Black was at its lowest ebb. The Rev. Dr. Robert B. Sutton, 1884-1891, succeeded to an atmosphere of relaxed weariness following the long drawn-out controversies over the “race question,” when support was most difficult, the more so because the Church had no settled policy of school work for the Negroes. Each had a task requiring all his fine ability.
It is no reflection on others (for comparison is impossible where the times and tasks were so distinct) to say that the Rev. Dr. Hunter’s great contribution was the complete reorganization of the educational ideal of St. Augustine’s, and its refounding on the devoted and heroic labors of his predecessors. Dr. Hunter’s 25 years of service contributed most powerfully to the movement which made the Church Institute possible, as well as to the present strong growth toward a solid foundation for the Christian education of the Negroes. He became Dr. Sutton’s assistant, when the “modern period” began. Old things were passing away, and the new had yet to be fashioned. The modern educational system was just beginning to be realized in the South. Dr. Hunter brought youth, vigor and ability to the task not only of justifying the wisdom of the fathers but of fulfilling the office of the wise steward in bringing forth old and new treasures to enrich the present and the future. He was ably seconded by Mrs. Hunter, and by his assistant who is now Bishop Delany.
The Rev. Edgar H. Goold, for four years Dr. Hunter’s assistant, is now the Principal. He is a graduate of Amherst College and of the General Theological Seminary.
NOTE 2
(Chapter VI, page 159)
James Solomon Russell was born of slave parents in Mecklenburg, Va., Dec. 20th, 1827. The name Solomon was bestowed by his mother with the prayer that the little one would inherit the wisdom of his namesake; and the prayer has been answered, for this boy has ripened into one of the wisest of his people. A war-boy, his early years were subjected to the privations of the general poverty of the times. At twelve years his schooling began, the boy paying his way partly by selling butter and eggs, and, for the balance, his labor. Hampton was the earthly goal of the young colored youths of that time, and Russell attained it. From Hampton he entered Major Cooke’s School in Petersburg, and graduated from the theological department, in 1882. Upon being ordered a deacon, he was at once appointed missionary to Brunswick and Mecklenburg counties, with residence at Lawrenceville. Within eight months he brought his wife, Miss Virginia M. Morgan, to make the happy home which has been the haven of the busiest man of his race in the world, with the exception of Dr. Washington. Mrs. Russell, until her death two years ago, was as vital to the life of the School as was her husband. In 1917, the Virginia Seminary conferred the Degree of Doctor of Divinity on Mr. Russell, the first person of color to receive this honor so rarely bestowed upon anyone by that venerable Seminary. Once has Dr. Russell declined election to the Episcopate, and once again to have his name presented. He felt the urge of duty too strongly at Lawrenceville to allow himself to be diverted. For many years he has been Archdeacon of Southern Virginia, and the most conspicuously wise leader among the 400,000 Negroes of the Diocese.
As a deacon, he opened a school in the vestry-room of the little church built by his own efforts. Mrs. Russell and himself were the teachers. The population was 88 per cent illiterate, and correspondingly prejudiced and superstitious. The story of the transformation is a romance of absorbing interest. The teacher was a travelling missionary, without other means than nature had provided for transporting himself over great distances. He pleaded for a horse before the Diocesan Convention. “Let’s give Brother Russell a horse,” was the response, and “Ida” became as well known as Russell himself over two large “black-belt” counties. So Russell and Ida became the missionary team, each producing fruit after its kind. The Archdeacon’s pupils became scouts and recruits in the forward army against sin and ignorance; Ida’s colts increased the transportation facilities of workers.
In the midst of besetting difficulties, the young priest found a steady sympathetic helper in Mrs. Buford whose daughter became the wife of the late Bishop of East Carolina. She had started a hospital for infirm colored people, and now extended her interest to the school.
NOTE 4
(Chapter VII, page 180)
The Methodist Bishop, William Capers, father of the late Bishop of South Carolina and grandfather of the Bishop of West Texas, gave much of his life to the Negro. No better witness can be found of the power of Jesus Christ over the life of those Negroes whom He specially called. These samples from Bishop Capers’ Autobiography are selected, his description regretfully abridged:
“The most remarkable man in Fayetteville (N. C.) when I went there, and who died during my stay, was a Negro by the name of Henry Evans. I say the most remarkable in view of his class; and I call him Negro with unfeigned respect. The name simply designates the race, and it is vulgar to regard it with opprobrium. I have known and loved and honored not a few Negroes in my lifetime, who were probably as pure of heart as Evans, or anybody else. Such were my old friends, Castile Selby and John Boquet, of Charleston; Will Campbell and Harry Myrick, of Wilmington; York Cohen, of Savannah; and others I might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use the word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father of the Methodist Church, black and white, in Fayetteville, and the best preacher of his time in that quarter; and who was so remarkable, as to have become the greatest curiosity of the town; insomuch that distinguished visitors hardly felt that they might pass a Sunday in Fayetteville without hearing him preach.”
Henry Evans was a shoemaker in Virginia, licensed to preach by the Methodists. Being free, he decided to move to Charleston. On the way, Fayetteville detained him. His spirit was stirred at perceiving the ungodliness of his people. There was no religion of any denomination, so Evans began preaching to his people. The Town Council objected, and he withdrew to the sandhills nearby. The results upon the changing lives were notable. Evans explained his motives to the authorities; and this, with the fruits of his work, won the day; he was allowed the liberty of the town. Mistresses and masters, powerfully influenced by the great improvement in their servants, began to attend the Services. They built a frame structure for the preaching, with seats for the Whites and a projection for Evans’ home. It became too small and was enlarged, for the Whites now occupied all of the original building, the Negroes the addition. “That,” continues Bishop Capers, “was the identical state of the case when I was pastor. Often was I in that shed, and much to my edification. I have known not many preachers who appeared more conversant with Scripture than Evans, and whose conversation was more instructive as to the things of God. He seemed always deeply impressed with the responsibility of his position; and not even our old friend Castile was more remarkable for his humble and deferential deportment towards the Whites than Evans was. Nor would he allow any partiality of his friends to induce him to vary, in the least degree, the line of conduct or the bearing which he had prescribed for himself in this respect; never speaking to a white man but with his hat under his arm, never allowing himself to be seated in their houses; and even confining himself to the kind and manner of dress proper for Negroes in general, except his plain black coat for the pulpit. ‘The Whites are kind to me, and come to hear me preach; but I belong to my own sort, and must not spoil them.’ And yet, Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and, in his duty, feared not the face of man.”
He died, Mr. Capers ministering to him, in 1810, his last breath drawn in the act of pronouncing, “Thanks be to God Which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Bishop Capers continues: “On the Sunday before Evans’ death, during this meeting, the little door between his humble shed and the chancel where I stood, was open; and the dying man entered for a last farewell to his people. He was almost too feeble to stand at all, but supporting himself by the railing of the chancel he said, ‘I have come to say my last word to you. It is this: None but Christ. Three times I have had my life in jeopardy for preaching the Gospel to you. Three times I have broken the ice on the edge of the water and swum across the Cape Fear to preach the Gospel to you. And now, if in my last hour, I could trust to that, or to anything else but to Christ crucified for my salvation, all would be lost, and my soul perish forever.’ A noble testimony, worthy, not of Evans only, but of Saint Paul! His funeral at the church was attended by a greater concourse of persons than had been seen on any funeral occasion before. The whole community appeared to mourn his death, and the universal feeling seemed to be that, in honoring the memory of Henry Evans, we were paying a tribute to virtue and religion. He was buried under the chancel of the church of which he had been in so remarkable a manner the founder.”
Henry Evans was of the literate class; not educated in the sense of this day, but of his day, when the Bible was far more the book of Christian people than it is now; and Henry Evans, was “wiser than his teachers.”
NOTE 5
(Chapter VII, page 185)
Attention may be called to two notable negro leaders of the early Nineteenth Century.
The Rev. William Douglass, the son of a blacksmith, born in Baltimore in 1805, made his way into the Methodist ministry. While at work on the Eastern Shore, he sought episcopal orders, and was ordained by Bishop Stone in St. Stephen’s, Cecil County. “In the evening,” wrote the Bishop, “the church was given up to the Colored People, and the Rev. Mr. Douglass preached to them an interesting sermon.” This was on June 22, 1834. The same year he was called to St. Thomas’ African Church, Philadelphia, which, since the death, in 1818, of its founder, the Rev. Absalom Jones, had been served by one and another of the white rectors of the city. On February 14, 1836, Mr. Douglass was advanced to the priesthood. Bishop Onderdonk who officiated, wrote, “Mr. Douglass is a man of color. I take the opportunity of recording my very high estimate of his highly respectable intellect and most amiable qualities which entirely relieved my mind, in his case, from the anxieties that I had long felt in regard to this department of episcopal duty. He ministers to a congregation entirely at unity in itself, much attached to him, and improving under his pastoral care in principles and duties of our common Christianity.”
Mr. Douglass became a leader of power among his race. Bishop Alonzo Potter, in announcing his death to the Convention of 1862, said, “It hath pleased the Lord to call away from the Church Militant the Rev. William Douglass, rector of St. Thomas’ African Church, in this city, where he has ministered for the last twenty-seven years—a man of great modesty, of ripe scholarship, and of much more than ordinary talents and prudence. He is, as far as I am informed, the only clergyman of unmixed African descent, who, in this country, has published work of considerable magnitude. In two volumes, one of sermons and one a history of St. Thomas’ Church, he has vindicated his right to appear among our respected divines. As a reader of the Liturgy he was unsurpassed.”
The Rev. Alexander Crummell, D.D., was born in New York in 1819. He was early baptized by the Rev. Peter Williams of St. Philip’s Church, under whom he was trained in the Church’s ways. In early manhood he applied for Orders. The General Theological Seminary declined to admit Negroes as students at that time, and Crummell was prepared for ordination in Boston. In 1842, he was ordained by Bishop Griswold. Dr. Clark, later Bishop of Rhode Island, was one of the examiners, and years afterwards the impression then strongly made was thus recorded: “I was appointed, with the late Rev. Dr. William Croswell, to examine young Crummell when he applied for deacon’s orders in the Diocese of Massachusetts; and I remember that Dr. Croswell afterwards remarked to me that no candidate for the ministry had ever passed through his hands who had given him more entire satisfaction.” After a brief year in Providence, R. I., Mr. Crummell answered the earnest call then coming from Liberia, and threw in his life with his colored brethren there. He was at once missionary, teacher, and the trainer of the theological students. Once he left Liberia for a stay in England, and returned with a Cambridge degree. After the Civil War, he returned to America, and, in Washington, founded St. Luke’s Church, whose corner-stone Bishop Pinckney laid in 1876. For more than twenty years he was its rector.
No man of the race in his day was more worthily esteemed, or more worthy of it, than Alexander Crummell, and none more truly an apostle of his Lord.
NOTE 6
(Chapter VII, page 185)
The Colony of Georgia affords another interesting illustration. It was the result of James Oglethorpe’s venture in colonizing debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates, a movement characterized as “the beginning of modern philanthropy,” and giving an opportunity to those noted missionaries of the Church of England, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield. Slavery was to be forbidden in the colony; but circumstances proved too strong. Rice was the staple crop, the waters formed its congenial home, and the Negroes—who else could so well subdue the swamps and make them productive? The result was inevitable. Georgia conformed to the general policy of her sister colonies.
As philanthropy was the motive, so religion was the animating spirit, of the new colony. Accordingly John and Charles Wesley were among the first colonists. The former established Christ Church Parish, Savannah, which was later divided, allowing the formation of Christ Church Parish, Frederica, named for the Savannah mother-church, Charles Wesley being its first rector, in 1736. These were deadly pioneer days, and rectors came thick and fast as predecessors were driven out, sometimes by political influence, most often by climatic.
Charles Wesley remained a year, and then John, his brother, assumed the charge of both parishes, making his way to Frederica on foot, trusting, for the crossing of the large rivers, to the passing canoes of the friendly Indians. “The fact of these visits to Frederica has been questioned,” writes the Rev. D. W. Winn, the present rector, “but the writer has seen Wesley’s own diary in which he tells how he fell into the water from a small boat while embarking from Frederica, and the leaves of the diary showed the marks of the water.” Mr. Winn, the descendant of the sister of those first missionaries, Charles and John Wesley, and fourteenth rector in succession from them, has had more than ordinary interest in the labors of his predecessors and in the knowledge of them. George Whitfield succeeded the Wesleys in 1737 or ’38; and, after them, three other missionaries of the period of establishment. The last, the Rev. Bartholomew Zorabuhler, was also the first of the line of permanent workers, serving from 1746 to 1766. Frederica, the chief centre of negro missions, furnishes our sample for the study of this early work in Georgia. The English Church Commissary, succeeding Commissary Bray for a part of the period, was the Rev. J. Ottolonghe, who made his headquarters in Savannah, and directed the Church’s enterprises in the colony.
Happily we have access to some of the early reports of the Commissary describing the negro work, these being kindly furnished by the Rev. James Lawrence, present historiographer of the Diocese. These are written with punctilious regard to the picturesquely bad spelling of the days of “Bloody Mary” and “Good Queen Bess,” one line only, in original, is here inflicted; it is dated Dec. 5, 1751. “In my last sent you by ye Charming Martha I took ye liberty to acquaint you with my safe arrival in Georgia.” The lonely Commissary takes large liberty in thus addressing his home-superiors through the intermediary, not of a charming spinster, but of a boat whose picture would belie the description; and he notes, in appropriate capitals, his arrival, safe from peril, to which a good 20 per cent of the adventurers of the time fell victims.
The letter proceeds: “As soon as the Fatigue of the Voyage permitted it, I desired Reverend Zouberbuyler (Zorabuhler, Mr. Winn says; but what matters such a liberty with names among friends?) that he would be so good as to give the people notice in the Church that I would instruct their Negroes three days in the week, viz.: Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which he accordingly did, and that I might make it easier to the Masters of these unhappy Creatures, I have appointed the Time of their coming to me to be at Night, when their daily Labour is done. When we meet, I make them go to Prayers with me, having composed for the purpose a few Prayers, suitable (I hope) to the Occasion. Having thus recommended Ourselves to the Protection of Heaven, and for his Blessing on our Undertaking; I instruct them to Reade, that they may be able in Time to comfort themselves in reading the Book of God. After this is done, I make them repeat the Lord’s Prayer and the Belief, and a Short Portion of the Catechism, explaining to them in as easie and Familiar a manner as I can the Meaning of what they repeat, and before I part with them, I make a Discourse to them on the Being of God, or the Life and Death of our adorable Redeemer, or upon some of ye Precepts of the Holy Gospel, generally introducing some Event or Story, taken out of the Bible, suitable to the Discourse in Hand; and in order to get their Love, I use them with all the Kindness and endearing Words that I am capable of, which makes them willing to come to me and ready to follow my advice, and as Rewards are Springs that set less selfish minds than these unhappy Creatures possess, on Motion, I have therefore promised to reward the Industrious and Diligent, and Hope through Christ’s Grace, that ’twill have its due Effect. These then, Dear Sir, are the Methods, these the Path, that I have chalked out in order to discharge my Duty. If right and agreeable to your better Judgement, I shall continue in them; if not, I shall be very ready to put in Practice any other Method, which you shall please to prescribe.”
As the efforts expand and the field is enlarged, new difficulties are met. In 1754, the Commissary has pushed out among the new arrivals. A more stable government had encouraged the expansion of planting interests. There were great difficulties to be met in reaching the Negroes of the new expansions. “Our Negroes,” he writes, referring to the new plantations, “are so ignorant of the English language, and none can be found to talk in their own, that it is a great while before you can get them to understand what the meaning of Words is. Again Slavery is certainly a great Depresser of the Mind, which retards their learning a new Religion proposed to them in a new and unknown Language, besides the superstitions of a false religion to be combatted with, and nothing harder to be removed (you know) than Prejudices of Education, riveted by Time and intrenched in deep Ignorance.” So there was anguish of heart all along the line.
In 1858, the Commissary’s letter clearly infers another peril to his efforts growing out of the quarrels of Christian denominations. A Church-Bill was presented to the Assembly seeking to better the conditions of the Slaves in all ways possible. But the Assembly was composed of a large majority of Dissenters, and the bill was presented by Church of England representatives—fair ground apparently for religious disputes which lost sight of bill, of Negroes, of religion and of justice.
It was the age of materialism which, as Professor Brawley says, “defeated the benevolence of Oglethorpe’s scheme for the founding of Georgia,” and against which the Church battled, not only on behalf of the slaves, but for the very life of religion. A difficult battle it was when self-interest was all arrayed on the side of materialism.
In his evident great zeal and anxiety, the Commissary was warmly followed by the Rev. Mr. Zorabuhler of Frederica, under whom that parish was fixed to include the “Town of Frederica, with the islands of Great and Little St. Simon’s, and the adjacent islands,” and the name changed to St. James’.
Throughout the Revolutionary period, the Missions were probably served from Savannah. Recovery from the disasters of war was very slow, and it was not until after the consecration of Bishop Elliott, in 1841, that the Church became organized for work. Only three clergymen were in Georgia to organize the primary Convention of the Diocese, in 1823.
In his first address to this Convention, Bishop Elliott said: “The religious instruction of our domestics, and of the Negroes upon plantations, is a subject that never should be passed over in the address of a Southern Bishop.” Six years later, he enlarged upon what he deemed to be a worthy ministry to them. He spoke from experience.
“During the last week, I visited the mission upon the north side of the Ogeeche River, under the charge of the Rev. William C. Williams. A neat country church has been erected by some of the planters of that side of the river, which was sufficiently completed for service but not for consecration. I officiated in it on Sunday, the 18th of April, when eight candidates were presented for Confirmation, the first fruits of the earnest labor of their missionary. Mr. Williams is pursuing the only plan that will be of any service with this class of our population, identifying himself with their spiritual condition, and going in and out among them as their pastor and guide. It is my earnest hope that our Episcopal planters will take this matter into consideration, and make arrangements for the employment of missionaries of their own Church, so that Masters and Servants may worship together in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace. It would tend very much to strengthen the relation of Masters and Servants, by bringing into action the highest and holiest feelings of our common nature. There should be much less danger of inhumanity on the one side, and of insubordination on the other, between parties who knelt upon the Lord’s day around the same Table and were partakers of the same Communion.”
The Ogeeche Mission has an interesting history of continuous life from 1847 to the present day. It is ten miles from Savannah in the heart of the then great rice fields, where two Churches—St. Mark’s the first, and still used, and St. Barnabas’, now decayed—were built. The Negroes were utterly illiterate, and remained so until about 1890, when Mr. Dodge built a school, and the younger ones were taught. The Services were committed to memory by that very large congregation, and the responses were, and are, “as the sound of many waters”; the singing, like a great organ. No instrument was used. The “clark” for about fifty years was a very big, commanding, black member with magnificent voice, who, at the proper time for chant or hymn, stood before the congregation, sounded the note, raised the tune, and both led and inspired the singers. The habit still continues.
The Rev. Mr. Winn, for a long time their rector, wrote this tribute in November, 1921. “They knew the Service and took part in a way to make one’s heart glow, and which would put any white city congregation to shame. To minister to and among them was an inspiration, even though physical conditions as to locomotion, etc., were trying. I have dealt with Negroes from the time of my ‘black Mammy’ Molinda, who was ‘no common nigger’ but a ‘Molly glossy nigger,’ having come from Madagascar; but while I could understand anything said to me while looking the speaker in the face and paying close attention, yet, when one of them spoke to another, it was mostly an unknown tongue to me.
“Bishop Nelson, late of Georgia, said that a Service among those rice-field Negroes was the most splendid thing he ever experienced. That was my experience also; for, excepting the great procession and Service at the laying of the corner-stone of the Washington Cathedral, some eighteen years ago, there has not been, in my 41 years of ministry, any approach to the joy of a Service among those Negroes. It was not merely enthusiasm—I could arouse that among any congregation of Negroes—it was apprehension, appreciation, and the outpouring of the soul.”
There is perhaps no congregation in the South upon which the ravages of war had so little effect. Later changes have greatly reduced their number, but the old habits remain. The offering is still, in part, eggs or other farm produce as reverently offered as the money and coins in the silver alms-basins of the city-church.
The reports of Georgia parishes in 1860, show that practically all were ministering to the Negroes. In addition to the extended work of Frederica Parish and St. Mark’s, Ogeeche, St. Stephen’s Chapel, Savannah, had been established in ’56, especially for the Negroes, and was the base of mission-work on nearby plantations.
NOTE 7
(Chapter VII, page 185)
Regarding the instruction in religion given to the Negroes by their white owners, the following may be of interest.
It is only occasionally that one finds a record like this: “In 1712 the Rev. Gilbert Jones was Rector of Christ Church Parish. He felt a great interest in the spiritual welfare of the Negroes, and endeavored to persuade their owners to assist in having them instructed in the Christian faith; but he found this good work lay under difficulties as yet insuperable.”
Generally the testimony is most favorable and encouraging, as, for example, “The Rev. William Taylor wrote to the Society in 1713, stating that Mrs. Haig and Mrs. Edwards, who lately came to the plantations in Carolina, have taken extraordinary pains to instruct a considerable number of Negroes in the principles of the Christian religion, and to reclaim and reform them. The wonderful success they met with in about six months, encouraged me to go and examine the Negroes about their knowledge in Christianity. They declared to me their faith in the chief articles of our religion, which they sufficiently explained. They rehearsed by heart, very distinctly, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Fourteen of them gave me so great satisfaction, and were so desirous to be baptized, that I thought it my duty to do it on the last Lord’s Day. I doubt not but these gentlewomen will prepare the rest of them for Baptism in a little time, and I hope their good example will provoke some masters and mistresses to take the same care and pains with their poor Negroes.”
NOTE 8
(Chapter VII, Page 186)
About 1834, an unknown writer, in South Carolina (a journal published by the State Agricultural Department) makes this significant statement which is strong testimony to the advancement of the race: “Despite the injunction, ‘Judge not,’ it has been asserted that the morality of the Negroes is not in proportion to their religious fervor. A class, marked as distinctly by their inferior social position as they are by race, invites such charges which are far more sweeping than just. If morality be the fruit of religion, it is not surprising (wonderful as the progress of the African in South Carolina has been) that morality has not, in one century and a half, attained the maturity, among the colored race, which has been the result of nearly nineteen centuries of Christian teachings to the European. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that any people exhibit in a higher degree that instinctive faith in the existence of absolute justice, truth, and goodness, which marks the capacity of human nature alike for religion and for morality, than do the colored people of this State.”
NOTE 9
(Chapter VII, page 186)
“Resolved, 1, That it is unnecessary at present for this body to take measures for the formation of any fund for supporting Missionaries to the colored people; it being understood that the difficulty is rather to obtain the missionaries, than the means of supporting them.
“... 5. That this Convention have heard, with great satisfaction, of the employment, by proprietors of estates on the Wateree and in Prince Williams Parish, of Missionaries of our Church, for the religious instruction of their colored people.”
And the reason is significantly, though perhaps unconsciously, given in these two extracts from the same issue:
“Wateree Mission—94 colored communicants. A decided religious influence prevails among the Negroes, for many are acting on principles but recently known to them. Sunday services on plantation, 45 times.”
NOTE 10
(Chapter VII, page 189)
From the many who wrought devotedly and mightily and lovingly among the plantation Negroes, there stand out a few men whom their contemporaries would have singled out for peculiar honors. And it surely is a peculiar honor to merit note among the able spirits who formed the staff of missionaries; for the Church entrusted the spiritual care of the Negro to her ablest and best. Among them all, the Rev. Alexander Glennie, rector of All Saints, Waccamaw, 1832-1866, must hold a place all his own in the annals of time. For thirty-four years he was the shepherd of the negro folds of the Waccamaw area. During those years the needs of his flock; the wise way to provide them; their capacity, intellectual and spiritual; the food needful for soul sustenance; the social cravings, and how to provide wholesome gratifications—all these, and more, were Mr. Glennie’s life study, and that of his life-long friend and co-worker, Mr. Plowden Weston, of Hagley Plantation, the seat of the largest single mission in the field.
Gaining completely and very early the confidence of planters and servants, Mr. Glennie labored in a vast field, restricted only by his powers of endurance, which were enormous. As plantations, one after another, came under his care, chapels were built and filled with well-instructed members and catechumens. By about 1845, in addition to teachers and catechists in large numbers, an Assistant Minister was employed, and, two years later, two. His sermons to the Negroes, published with an introduction by himself, are marvels of beautiful simplicity, the high art of the perfect teacher. In reading his Good Friday sermon, the wonder is how so great and so marvelous a mystery could be so truly and beautifully unfolded in a wealth of one and two-syllable words. And the blessed story loses absolutely nothing from the simplicity of the telling.
In him were combined the art of the teacher and the tending care of the shepherd. “My habit is,” he writes, “after concluding the Service, to question the people assembled upon the sermon they have just heard, which enables me to dwell more at large upon matters briefly touched upon in the sermon. This practice, and the frequent use of our Church Catechism, is, I need scarcely say, the most important part of the duty of those engaged in the instruction of Negroes.” We might add, in the better instruction of anybody.
NOTE 11
(Chapter VII, page 191)
Similar to the work of Mr. Glennie and of Mr. Weston (after whom Weston Chapel was named) was that of Mr. Drayton.
The Rev. J. G. Drayton was both a clergyman and a planter, his plantation being the far-famed “Magnolia” in St. Andrew’s Parish, of which he was rector. Besides Magnolia chapel built by him, he ministered regularly for many years from about 1850, to two other chapels for the Negroes—Barker’s and Magwood’s, in the same parish. From a letter of a descendant of Mr. Drayton’s, these extracts are quoted rather freely:
“In looking back to them, I now realize how out of the ordinary these Services were; how beautiful the feeling existing between the priest and his people; how simple, sweet, and uplifting it all was—even to a little child—to sit there listening to his words, feeling that greater love through his love. The picture of him that I carry in my memory I wish that I might send to you. One cannot put an influence into words. His face during the prayers; the high, weird singing of the Negroes in the familiar hymns; the breath of the fresh spring woods as it brought the Easter message through the wide windows—all blend to make the memory. I remember, too, a ceremony that was always amusing. It was his habit before Service to distribute among the poorest of the congregation a contribution which, later, they placed, with the air of millionaires, in the alms basin. And then, after ‘Marse John’ had exhorted them to his and their satisfaction, there was a great crowding around his small phaeton. The drive home was frequently made lively, and precarious as well, because of the gifts of ‘frizzle fowls’ and ‘yard aigs.’ The roads were often bad and the eggs good, and one had to be careful.”
After the destruction of Sherman’s raid, being left very poor and the phæton destroyed, Mr. Drayton, though an old man, never faltered but used to walk some twelve or sixteen miles each Sunday to hold at least three Services in the houses of the parish. (The chapels were burned in the raid.)
NOTE 12
(Chapter VII, page 197)
Notable among the founders of schools and parishes was John W. Perry, who spent his life in Tarboro, N. C., as rector, founder of a parochial school, and missionary over a wide area. From his school went his gifted son, now Principal of St. Athanasius’, Brunswick, Ga. Another is the Rev. James S. Russell, D. D., founder of St. Paul’s School and many missions, and Archdeacon of Southern Virginia. Had it not been for St. Augustine’s, and St. Paul’s, the Church would be barren indeed of workers. Still another is the Rev. Hutchins C. Bishop, whose strong personality has quickened the life of the negro churches of New York, and helped to treble their growth. Others are the Rev. Henry S. McDuffy, long a worker in North Carolina, now a fine spiritual power, with Dr. Henry Phillips, in the life of Philadelphia; the Rev. Primus B. Alston, founder of the parish and school in Charlotte, N. C., the soldier of steadfast faith and loyalty; the Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, a church-builder in his first years in Virginia, and for thirty years rector of old St. James’, Baltimore, whose intense love for the Church has been contagious, and whose loyalty to his race has been an inspiration to them; the Rev. Geo. G. Middleton, who built his church and rectory in Natchez, Miss., for he was a carpenter and followed his Master in trade and calling; the Rev. William V. Tunnell, Warden and Professor in King Hall and rector of St. Phillips, Washington, an inspiring teacher in classroom and parish; the Rt. Rev. Henry B. Delaney, D. D., Dean of St. Augustine’s Raleigh, his Alma Mater, Archdeacon of negro work, and, since 1918, Suffragan Bishop of N. C., and acting in that office for all the Carolinas; the Rev. Dr. W. T. Hermitage who served nearly all his ministry in North Carolina, building churches and giving a son to the ministry.
Education was bringing about new class relationships within the negro race itself as well as between the Negroes and the Whites; and upon these men and their associates devolved the task of adjusting these relationships. Wisely, with Christian patience and grace and faith, have they accepted the call and met the difficult duties. Looking back upon these forty years, it must fill the student of the story with admiration for these sane, steady, Christian leaders. Reflecting upon the great difficulties which beset them, surely only the most profound sympathy must be felt.
NOTE 13
(Chapter VII, page 200)
The story of Mr. Dodge is interesting, and his benefaction, in this region certainly, has but one parallel—that of Mr. Clarkson in South Carolina, which failed because of pre-war adverse laws.
Young Dodge came, about 1884, to visit his father, whose large interests were near Brunswick. The beauty of the surroundings, still with the scars of war apparent everywhere, the ruins of the old churches, the unshepherded Negroes wandering astray, the poverty from which recovery was necessarily slow—all these appealed to his fine sensibilities. He determined to apply for Holy Orders and devote himself to the negro people of the islands. The story of Frederica parish had been a romance; its ruin formed an irresistible appeal. On the foundation of the ruins he began to build, and, with the building, his vision enlarged to include the evangelization of some thirty-nine counties. After the earlier structures had been reared, he was ordained, and then proceeded to devote $72,000 to the Missions, of which he became Missionary Trustee with successive rectors of Frederica as Trustees in turn. With the approval of the Bishop, he took over the negro mission work of the Diocese. One by one, mission-chapels (used often as schools during the week) were built, served sometimes by priests, sometimes by teachers who were also lay readers. The Rev Mr. Winn came first, as Assistant and remains in charge to this day.
One of the most noted of Mr. Dodge’s negro teachers was J. B. Gillespie, who went from the Sewanee St. Mark’s Mission, in 1875, as lay reader of St. Perpetua Chapel and School, of which he was the first teacher. Gillespie’s father had been chief of one of the black tribes of Africa. He was captured in battle and sold to one of the last slave-ships smuggling cargoes into America. In America, he came into the hands of Col. Peter Turney (afterwards Governor of Tennessee), a man of remarkable power and humanity. Gillespie was treated by the Colonel with due appreciation of his native standing. So Gillespie, the teacher, was a prince once removed from his native land; and he was one in character and in intellectual reach. Eventually he was ordained, intending to return to Africa as a Christian priest; but a fever epidemic through which he nursed his people, carried him away at its close, and he was buried by his chapel in 1887. The older people still revere his name.
NOTE 14
(Chapter VII, page 207)
The story of such establishments is not without its romance. These have been difficult to secure; but there are doubtless many more to parallel this tribute which is taken from The Church Advocate, of August, 1921. In the initial work leading to the foundation of Epiphany, Orange, Miss Ruth Mason was the moving spirit. She opened a Sunday School for the Negroes of the old parish, and has been a devoted friend and co-worker ever since. Says The Advocate, “In spite of her advanced age, she is worth more to the work in Orange than a curate. If we only had a few more such in every northern community, Church extension among our group in such localities would become vitally real. Miss Mason was also instrumental in getting St. Andrew’s, Patterson, under way.”