Rev. John Talbot (1645-1727), “Apostle of New Jersey,” Enslaver

Icon of George Keith (L) and John Talbot (R) displayed at the diocesan headquarters in Trenton, New Jersey.
The Greek to the right of Talbot is translated “The Holy John.” Photo by Jolyon Pruszinski.

One of the earliest priests installed in New Jersey was the Rev. John Talbot, who, together with the Rev. George Keith, worked to plant and sustain many of the earliest congregations in the colony. He served most consistently at St. Mary’s Burlington, where he resided and served in his later years, until his death in 1727.[1] Talbot was best known as a well-established priest who appears to have sought to become the bishop of the colonies through debatably reputable channels.[2] And while the latter years of his priestly service were tarnished by allegations of seeking, and claiming, dubious episcopal authority, he should also be known as an enslaver. This source of his wealth and his practice of enslavement is typically glossed over by church historians, taking a cue from contemporaneous avoidance of the topic. The Rev. Nathaniel Horwood, who immediately followed Talbot in Burlington, insisted that few residents of Burlington owned slaves, and that though some Anglicans in Burlington did enslave Black people, for the most part their servants were white.[3] This articulation of the situation seems to strain to avoid the fact that the wealth of many Anglican Burlington families was tied to plantation ownership (and enslavement) in other locations, particularly the West Indies. Talbot was among those with significant West Indies holdings, as is shown by legal documentation from the time. In her last will and testament, which came into effect only three years after the death of Rev. John Talbot, the widow Mrs. Talbot bequeathed to her children at least seven enslaved persons, most of whom were enslaved in the West Indies.[4] The avoidant treatment of this practice of enslavement has been perpetuated by Episcopal historians, including Nelson Burr,[5] who repeats Horwood’s characterization of Anglican enslavement in Burlington uncritically even as he was aware of the documentary evidence of Talbot’s practice of slavery.[5]

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] Robert W. Duncan, Jr., “A Study of the Ministry of John Talbot in New Jersey, 1702-1727: On ‘Great Ripeness,’ Much Dedication, and Regrettable Failure,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 42.3 (1973): 233-256.

[2] Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), 643-44.

[3] Horwood to the SPG Secretary, from Burlington, April 22, 1728 (SPG Correspondence Letter Book A, Vol. 21, pp. 327-331): https://britishonlinearchives.com/collections/11/volumes/37/the-a-series-letter-books-1702-1737. He writes “There are no large plantations hereabout, so yt ye substance of ye inhabitants does consist in negroes slaves but in trade, they keeping only white servants generally, & they few that keep negroes not about one to a family…”

[4] Anne Talbot, “The Will of Mrs. Talbot,” in George M. Hills, History of the Church in Burlington, New Jersey (Trenton, NJ: William S. Sharp, 1876), 246-47.

[5] But also Robert Duncan in “A Study of the Ministry of John Talbot in New Jersey, 1702-1727.” Duncan, like Burr, is aware of the documentation in Hills’ History of the Church in Burlington.

[6] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 225: “Horwood observed that there were no large plantations about the town and therefore few Negro slaves, and that the people were mostly traders and kept white servants.” It is clear from other citations that he is aware of the material reproduced in Hills’ History of the Church in Burlington (See Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 667-68).

VIDEO: Station of Reparations Service, Diocese of New Jersey, March 15, 2025

The third Stations of Reparations service of repentance in the Diocese of New Jersey was held at Christ the King Episcopal Church, Willingboro on March 15, 2025. Parishes presenting on their history included Christ the King (Willingboro), St. Peter's (Medford), St. Thomas' (Glassboro), St. Wilfrid's (Camden), and St. Augustine's (Camden). Many thanks to the Rev. Vernal Savage and the members of Christ the King for hosting, to all the participants, and to the diocesan Reparations Commission, particularly the Rev. Beth Rauen Sciaino and the Rev. Jack Zamboni. 

Rev. Earl B. Scott (1919-1984): Celebrated Leader, UBE Namesake

“Father Earl B. Scott.” Detail from 
“St. Mary’s Episcopal Church joins in New Jersey’s Tercentenary Celebration,”
(1964), 16. Courtesy Diocese of New Jersey archives.

“Earl B. Scott was born on July 11, 1919 in Pleasantville, NJ, to… John H. and Minnie Brown Scott, the eleventh of twelve children… [where he] attended the public schools.”[1] As a young man Scott attended Glassboro State Teacher’s College which, at the time, was subject to state investigations resulting from its segregation practices.[2] Nevertheless Scott graduated from the institution, managing to succeed in spite of significant documented racism.[3] He “received a Bachelor of science degree in Education [from Glassboro],… earned a second baccalaureate degree in Sacred Theology with honors from the Philadelphia Divinity School… and [then] a Master of Divinity from the Episcopal Theological School… [in] Cambridge, Mass.”[4]
            Starting out as a member of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Pleasantville, New Jersey, “in 1950, the leadership of St. Mary’s was assumed by… Scott, who served as Layreader until 1957, when he was ordained to the Priesthood.”[5] Scott was beloved at St. Mary’s being described as having “served efficiently and well,”[6] a testament to the long tradition “of outstanding significance in St. Mary’s history… that Layreaders… [regularly] played a vital role in its growth and then… [continued on] to Priesthood in the Episcopal Church. These men – Father Harris, Father Ferrell and Father Scott – represent the blood, sweat and tears of the history of St. Mary’s Church among the legions of the Priesthood.”[7]
            After his successful tenure at St. Mary’s Rev. Scott was called to St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Red Bank, New Jersey. He “served St. Thomas from April 1962 to June 1979,”[8] starting out as vicar. “Under his leadership, St. Thomas became a self-supporting Parish in 1965, with him… [becoming] the first Rector, after [the congregation having been] a Mission for fifty years.”[9]
            “Fr. Scott…took a great interest in ministry to the young. He started a thriving youth club at St. Thomas, and during his time, the church hosted a Head Start Program for pre-schoolers.”[10] Wherever he went he “he became an advocate for the under-privileged.”[11] “From 1967 through 1971, Fr. Scott served as Social Worker for the Monmouth County Community Action Program working with black, white and Spanish families in the Bayshore area… [and] served as an educational consultant and trainer of aides for the Head Start Program.”[12] As an “effective and devoted community leader, advocate and activist with a long history of service to the various communities in which he resided, Fr. Scott served as the first Afro-American elected[13] to the Borough Council of Red Bank… [and] in 1977 he became the [Council] president.”[14] He also served “as Chairperson of the Board of Red Bank Community Center, [as] a board member of the Monmouth County Mental Health Association, … on the Youth Employment Service, [the] Monmouth County Cotillion Committee, … the tutorial and scholarship committees of the local chapter of the NAACP, the Red Bank Men’s Club, Prince Hall Masons... [on] the Union of Black Episcopalians,”[15]
and “as a Chaplain at Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank, NJ, and Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch, NJ.”[16]
            So beloved had he been in Pleasantville that Rev. “Scott returned [to St. Mary’s] in 1979 after a ministry of 17 years in St. Thomas of Red Bank, New Jersey.”[17] He served with the congregation at St. Mary’s “until his death on August 24, 1984.”[18]
            “Fr. Scott… had a great impact on the life of the Diocese, where he… [served as] a member of the Board of Missions,”[19] as “Dean of the Monmouth Convocation, president of the Monmouth Clericus of Episcopal Priests and [as head of] the Greater Red Bank Council of Churches and the Westside Ministerium.”[20] Rev. Scott was “active as a member of the Division of Urban Concerns, the Bishop Trial Court, [and] the Major Chapter of Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, NJ.”[21] In particular, “he became a catalyst to challenge racism in the church and community.”[22] At one specially memorable “Clergy Conference in 1983 he challenged the Diocese on the issue of race, by telling his experiences of racism in the Episcopal Church. This led to the establishment of the Diocesan Committee on Racism of which he was the first Chairman. He was a founder of the Black Clergy Caucus of the Diocese…. [and] inspired the formation of the [Diocese of New Jersey] Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians.”[23] Taken too soon from the people he loved, “eight months after his death on August 24, 1984 the UBE chapter was named in memory and thanksgiving for his leadership and service.”[24]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] Anna Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott,” 1995. MSS held at Diocese of New Jersey archives, Trenton, New Jersey. MSS is nearly identical to Anna Henderson, “The Reverend Earl B. Scott,” 1995: https://www.ebsube.org/earl-scott/.
[2] New Jersey Urban Colored Population Commission, “Annual Report of the Urban Colored Population Commission, State of New Jersey, Year Ending December 31, 1943,” (1944), pp. 82-87 (of the digitized edition): https://dspace.njstatelib.org/items/def4766a-f51d-4e1e-8f52-c4fcb97de98c.
[3] Gary J. Hunter, Neighborhoods of Color: African American Communities in Southern New Jersey, 1638-2000 (Glassboro, NJ: Rowan University, 2002).
[4] Later known as Episcopal Divinity School. Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.”
[5] Maxwell Manning, “From this Humble Beginning,” page 14 in “St. Mary’s Episcopal Church joins in New Jersey’s Tercentenary Celebration,” (1964). MSS of pamphlet held at Diocese of New Jersey archives, Trenton, New Jersey. “On April 27, 1957 he was ordained to the Diaconate in the Diocese of New Jersey and in that same year was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood on November 2, 1957.” Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.”
[6] He was so loved that he was invited back to serve as priest again later in his career. Manning, “From this Humble Beginning,” 14.
[7] Manning, “From this Humble Beginning,” 14.
[8] Historical Committee of St. Thomas Church, “Historical Highlights: St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Red Bank, New Jersey, 1891-1991 Centennial,” 14. MSS held at Diocese of New Jersey archives, Trenton, New Jersey.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.”
[13] He served from 1974 to 1977.
[14] Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.”
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Manning, “From this Humble Beginning,” 14.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Historical Committee of St. Thomas Church, “Historical Highlights,” 14-15.
[20] Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.”
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Historical Committee of St. Thomas Church, “Historical Highlights,” 14-15.
[24] Henderson, “A Biography of Earl Brown Scott.” 

Rev. Eugene L. Henderson: First Black Priest Ordained in the Diocese of New Jersey

 Detail of “St. John's Episcopal Church, Broadway and Royden Street, Camden, N.J.” postcard.
St. John's initially supported St. Augustine's, and many decades later ownership of their building
was transferred to St. Augustine’s. Public domain image, courtesy of dvrbs.camdenhistory.com.

Very little published documentation exists about the life and ministry of the Rev. Eugene Leon Henderson, but it seems clear that he was the very first Black priest ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey.

He became a candidate for deacon’s orders on March 22, 1893 in the Diocese of North Carolina,[1] and his formal education occurred at Howard University in Washington D.C.[2]  Ordained to the diaconate by the Rt. Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Bishop of North Carolina, in 1895,[3] Henderson became canonically resident in the Diocese of New Jersey in 1896,[4] and was installed as the missionary deacon of St. Augustine’s Church, Camden.[5] This mission was started and initially supported by St. John’s, Camden, under Rev. John H. Townsend in June 1888,[6] and had been led by white priests until that point. Bishop John Scarborough of New Jersey, who had long advocated for better support for African-American ministry in the diocese,[7] ordained Henderson to the priesthood on October 7, 1897. The ordination took place in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Camden.[8]

Henderson served St. Augustine’s as their priest, curate[9] through 1898 during this formative period of its growth.[10] He went on to serve in many young congregations across the United States, gaining a “national reputation for developing congregations.”[11] Among other places he served were St. Philip’s, Annapolis, Maryland, St. Luke’s, New Haven, Connecticut,[12] Chapel of the Holy Cross, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania,[13] St. Titus’, Durham, North Carolina,[14] and the Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C. For a time he also held the position of the “archdeaconship of colored work in Georgia,” based in Atlanta.[15] Moreover, he was a very influential priest in the life of Rev. Pauli Murray, who was a congregant of his in both North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] Diocese of North Carolina, Journal of the Seventy-Seventh Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of North Carolina (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1893), 14.

[2] Frederic E. J. Lloyd, ed., The American Church Clergy and Parish Directory for 1905 (Uniontown, PA: Frederic E.J. Lloyd, 1905), 146.

[3] George F. Bragg, History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore: Church Advocate Press, 1922), 273.

[4] Formally received on September 9, 1896. Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Fifteenth Convention, Being the One Hundred and Second Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey (Princeton: Princeton Press, 1887), 186.

[5] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Fifteenth Convention, 11, 79.

[6] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Convention, Being the One Hundred and Fourth Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey (Princeton: Princeton Press, 1889), 72.

[7] See, Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, “Bishop Scarborough’s Convention Address of 1890,” DNJRJR (January 1, 2024): https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2024/01/bishop-scarboroughs-convention-address.html.

[8] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Convention, Being the One Hundred and Thirteenth Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey (Princeton: Princeton Press, 1898), 180. Eventually, the congregation of St. Augustine’s, Camden moved into St. John’s, Camden when the mostly white parishioners of St. John’s abandoned the church during the period of “white flight” that plagued Camden during the 20^th century.

[9] Lloyd, The American Church Clergy and Parish Directory for 1905, 146.

[10] David R. King, Forward with Christ: A Bicentennial Historical Book (Trenton, NJ: The Diocesan Bicentennial Committee, 1985), 48.

[11] The Episcopal Church of the Atonement, “Our History,”: https://atonementepiscopaldc.org/our-history/.

[12] Bragg, History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, 108.

[13] Diocese of Pennsylvania, “Journal of the 136^th Convention,” 284.

[14] The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, “Pauli Murray,”: https://www.episdionc.org/about-us/our-priorities/formation/north-carolina-saints/pauli-murray/.

[15] Bragg, History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, 109.

EVENT: 3rd Annual Stations of Reparations Service, March 15, 2025

The Reparations Commission of the Diocese of New Jersey invites you to a family event during Lent: the third annual Stations of Reparations service, a moving liturgy with congregational reflections on our racial history. The service will occur on Saturday March 15, 2025 at 3pm at Christ the King Episcopal Church, (40 Charleston Road, Willingboro, New Jersey 08046). The service will also be live-streamed on YouTube:  @christthekingepiscopalchur3073.

VIDEO: NJ Reparations Council Public Session #9 - Public Education

 

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has posted video from the ninth of nine public sessions sponsored by the New Jersey Reparations Council, held on February 12, 2025. The content deals with the work of the Committee on "Public Education and Narrative" in New Jersey.

Diocesan Reparations Commission Members on Pilgrimage in New Jersey

Members of the Reparations Commission at the Perth Amboy Ferry Slip. Photo, Jolyon Pruszinski.

Members of the Reparations Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey used the first day of Black History Month to take a pilgrimage visiting sites related to Anglican and Episcopal slavery in New Jersey. The pilgrimage was produced through the research of the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review. Sites included the Perth Amboy Ferry Slip, the Tinton Falls African Burial Ground, Marlpit Hall in Middletown, and Sandy Hook. You can take the pilgrimage too!