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The Jersey Shore water route of the Underground Railroad.
From William Still, Underground Rail Road Records (Philadelphia: William Still, 1886; Rev. Ed.), 482. |
John Nelson Still was born to Charity and Leven Still of eastern Burlington County on January 8, 1815.[1] One of eighteen children, his older brother James went on to local renown as the celebrated “Doctor of the Pines,”[2] and his youngest brother William to even greater renown as the first prominent chronicler of the underground railroad.[3] His parents had been enslaved in Maryland until his father purchased his own freedom and his mother escaped, moving together to New Jersey.[4] The family was very impoverished, but John eventually managed to prosper as a businessman, moving to Brooklyn by around 1840 and there growing and running a thriving “tailoring shop, … second-hand clothing store, and … barber supply business,”[5] and becoming one of the most successful Black businessmen in the city.[6]
While based in Brooklyn, Still also developed a reputation as a community leader, intellectual, and political activist in the Black Nationalist movement.
During the early 1850’s, Still advocated a program of racial unity and economic nationalism as the keys to black advancement. He urged blacks to form their own businesses, financial institutions, press, and artisans unions as a means of improving the situation of the race. He promoted these ideas through black newspapers, at black state and national conventions, and as a member of the New York State Council of the Colored People. Still—a correspondent, financial backer, and agent for five black newspapers—thought the press would be the most effective tool in rallying blacks behind his program.[7]
He regularly served with Frederick Douglass on the National Council of the Colored People,[8] was a regular contributor to Fredrick Douglass’ Paper, among other periodicals, and had “joined David Ruggles in calling for the National Reform Convention of Colored Citizens at Hartford in 1840.”[9] Moreover, like other members of his family, during his time in Brooklyn “He became a key figure in the local underground railroad and publicly urged blacks throughout the state to resist the [Fugitive Slave Law] by whatever means necessary.”[10]
His opinions on business theory and racial uplift were well-known among Black intellectuals.[11] He “believed in the power of black ownership of the means of [production],”[12] arguing that “social advancement would be impossible… without changing economic goals.”[13] In a 1852 letter to Henry Bibb, the editor of Voice of the Fugitive, Still wrote:
I think [your paper] aims more directly at what we need than any paper we have had yet, I mean the investigation and introduction of practical moneymaking operations. We want more financiers and not so many ministers, at least not ‘of the same sort.’ Heretofore we have been principally engaged in building churches and making ministers; we have but few producers, but few manufacturers, and I may say, no financiers… If some of those gentlemen who have roamed the country arguing theoretical questions, in the pay of our friends, the abolitionists, had been half the time investigating practical moneymaking questions, we think they would have… in the main, done more good. It is strange, but true, that all the institutions we have formed[14] and made so much ado about, consume a great deal, but produce nothing… their principles are all good, the same to be found in any church, but they occupy a great deal of time and consume a great deal of means, and leave us but little… better off. I am convinced that our reading, writing, thinking, talking and lecturer, and conventions, must be directed more to practical operations[15]
While clearly committed to advocacy, Still had personally seen the pragmatic benefits of success in business and the possible pro-social effects of ownership of the means of production, particularly when put in service to improvement of Black life.
Among the necessary approaches Still saw for improving Black life in the United States were not just business ownership and finance, but Black land ownership. While living in New York, he sought to support the formation of the Black settlement of Weeksville in Brooklyn,[16] and an initiative in the Adirondacks prioritizing Black land grants.[17] “But worsening race relations and the ineffectiveness of integrationist leaders moved him”[18] over time to support proposals advocating for large-scale Black emigration to Canada.[19] In 1854 “he signed the call for the first National Emigration Convention… [and] He later attended the 1856 National Emigration Convention in Cleveland but soon abandoned his advocacy of the movement,”[20] in part as a result of pushback from other Black leaders.
His advocacy took other forms as well. In the 1850’s he produced and toured with a large-scale, moving, slave narrative panorama (or diorama),[21] based in-part on his own family’s experience which he claimed was the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.[22] The panorama also“ illustrated scenes… from Afro-American history—including black military service in the American Revolution and War of 1812, the Haitian Revolution, and contemporary black leaders.”[23]
All of his efforts as a Black Nationalist were focused, at root, in advocacy for Black community organizing.[24] To this end, he began to sell his businesses in the 1850s[25] and transition to teaching. He taught in Brooklyn briefly,[26]before moving to the township of Shrewsbury, New Jersey.[27] He urged like-minded Black people to join him there in the free Black settlement of Macedonia, “to locate in rural New Jersey and to adopt an agrarian life-style.”
While some accounts suggest that “He had retired from public life by the beginning of the Civil War,”[29] it is more accurate to say that he retired from business and from national-scale organizing and advocacy. But it is in his, so-called, “retirement” in New Jersey where he became involved with the Episcopal mission[30] in the free Black settlement of Macedonia associated with the Christ Church, Shrewsbury “parish school for coloured children.”[31] Still is the first teacher mentioned in diocesan records of the school,[32] and under his supervision the number of students grew dramatically.[33]
At this time Still served as a lay reader for the Black Episcopal mission congregation at Macedonia, likely the first Black man in the diocese to hold such an office,[34] and was soon approved as a Candidate for Holy Orders. He was certainly the first Black man to have been so approved in the Diocese of New Jersey.[35] And in his plans to become a priest, it seems likely that he envisioned becoming a priest “not of the same sort”[36] as those that had preceded him. That is to say, he clearly planned to be a priest who was deeply committed to the practical training and success of Black people.
As with many of his previous endeavors, the school at Macedonia and the mission associated with it did very well with Still at the helm. Between 1857 and 1862 regular attendance at the school was over one hundred students.[37] There was a service every Sunday at the mission[38] and Episcopal visits that had occurred for confirmations under Bishop Doane continued under Bishop Odenheimer.[39] In spite of Bishop Doane’s apparent excitement over the success of the mission,[40] it does not appear that the Diocese directly supported it financially. Rather it seems that the school and mission were funded by donations from Christ Church, Shrewsbury and through the labor (and probably the financial support) of Still and other Macedonians, with “oversight” from the Christ Church rector, Rev. Harry Finch. In diocesan records the success of the school and mission are attributed to Finch, though it is unlikely that he did more than officiate at services in order to allow for a eucharist to be celebrated.[41]
In spite of the dramatic success of the school and mission in Macedonia, and Still’s faithful, and almost certainly unpaid, labor there, his ordination candidacy was never advanced. At a time when most white candidates were advanced to ordination to the priesthood within three years of their being approved candidates, diocesan authorities allowed Still to linger on the “Candidates for Holy Orders” list, neither outright rejecting him, nor ordaining him a deacon for at least nine years.
Ultimately, Still stepped down as the parish school teacher, and the teaching responsibility was passed to others.[42] The last time Still is listed as a candidate for Holy orders is in 1864,[43] and extant Diocesan records do not explain why his candidacy was ended. However, it is abundantly clear that he was repeatedly passed over for ordination in spite of his successful ministry in Macedonia, serial business successes, intellectual standing, high-profile political advocacy, and hard work. No white candidates for the priesthood in the diocese at this time could point to anything close to John N. Still’s achievements, dedication, and mission support, and yet dozens of them were ordained, while he was not. Still’s experience is indicative of the state of race relations in the diocese at the time: a few white leaders were, at times, willing to affirm some modest forms of Black leadership in Black ministries, especially when it resulted in increased numbers of confirmands at a low cost, but a full affirmation of Black excellence was not forthcoming. Still was one of the most accomplished Black men in America at this time. He gave over a decade of service to the Episcopal Mission at Macedonia, and the Diocese never ordained him.
After Still’s candidacy ended and he retired from the Macedonia Mission, it appears that support for the work was withdrawn by Christ Church Shrewsbury within a couple of years. The size of the mission dwindled in the coming decades, until eventually in the late 1880s it appears to have ceased. In its later years the mission produced another likely candidate for the priesthood, but, perhaps as a result of Still’s experience, he moved to North Carolina for further training and support.[44]
John N. Still deserves to be remembered as an accomplished intellectual, abolitionist, teacher, political activist, businessman, and candidate for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church; a man who sought to affirm and nurture Black excellence and flourishing in the church, but whose gifts and service the Diocese of New Jersey never fully affirmed or supported.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
Beverly Tomek, “Moderate, Radical, and Militant Abolition,” pages 62-71 in Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, Vol. 1, edited by Immanuel Ness (New York: Routledge, 2015), here 70. See also Derrick R. Spires, The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 288n83: “John N. Still… argued that black-owned banks or investment firms would at least allow ‘our cooks, stewards, whalemen, and others’ to make their earnings productive in ‘corporate bodies’ dedicated to the benefit of the community... Still suggests that so-called unproductive labor, like domestic or service work, could become productive through the investment of wages.”
Judith Wellman, Brooklyn’s Promised Land: The Free Black Community of Weeksville, New York (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 102.
Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of Proceedings of the Seventy-Fourth Annual Convention; in St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, on Wednesday, 27 May, MDCCCLVII (Burlington: F. Ferguson, 1857), 58.
Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Eleventh Convention, Being the Ninety-Eighth Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of New Jersey, Held in St. Paul’s Church, Camden, Tuesday, May 8th, and Wednesday, May 9th, MDCCCLXXXIII (Princeton: Robinson & Co., 1883), 131.
