SUMMARY: The establishment of the Diocese of New Jersey was accomplished with resources derived through the enslavement of Black Americans. The earliest influential priests gained their wealth from enslaved labor and directly held Blacks enslaved, as did the early bishops. The building of churches during this period used funds derived from the enslavement of Blacks, and elite lay Episcopalians were among some of the worst abusers of the institution. In spite of missionary attention to enslaved Blacks during the colonial period, Blacks in New Jersey generally did not widely embrace the Episcopal Church during the gradual abolition period, seeking instead religious institutions that better affirmed their leadership and initiative.
The Development of The Episcopal Church and its Relation to Slavery in Antebellum New Jersey
When looking back at the 19th century history of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey some of the data regarding its treatment of Black Americans can be surprising to a modern reader. This may be especially true if one views the Church through its modern reputation of being one of the most progressive Christian denominations in the United States.[1] To such a reader the picture of the Diocese during the period of gradual abolition in New Jersey may seem unfamiliar. As a founding member of Trinity Church in Princeton Robert Stockton not only himself enslaved hundreds of Black Americans, but was instrumental in the American Colonization Society efforts to rid the nation of Blacks.[2] The first Bishop of the Diocese, John Croes, not only enslaved Blacks, but freed them just before he became legally liable for their care in old age.[3] St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood welcomed and affirmed the participation of Jacob Van Wickle who, as a judge in Middlesex County, was the central enabler of a notorious interstate slave trading ring designed to circumvent gradual abolition law.
The precedents formed in the colonial era shaped how the Diocese handled issues related to slavery and the treatment of Black Americans during the gradual abolition period in New Jersey. While the Church of England was never formally established in New Jersey, its role as a state church in England set the tone for how its priests and laity handled the issues of slavery. The role played by the Church of England in sanctioning the plantation economy in New Jersey as a legitimate enterprise, and enslaved Blacks as instrumental to its success, influenced the treatment of Black Americans in the Diocese long after the Crown had ceased oversight, and even well after England and other northern states had rejected slavery. These influences and their afterlives following the American Revolution, likely served to estrange many Black Americans from the Episcopal Church in the early days of the Diocese of New Jersey and helped set the tone for a widely acknowledged[5] alienation from the denomination.
Following the Revolutionary War, the few remaining Anglican clergy who had not fled the colony sought to restart public worship and to repair what had been lost and destroyed during the war. The process, however, was slow, as friends of the Church of England generally were viewed as traitors to the American patriot cause. Rebuilding would also involve organizing the Church apart from the efforts of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG). Dioceses were organized by state, but the speed at which a Bishop was finally appointed in New Jersey (not until 1815) indicates the state of organizational and financial disarray at the time. The Church of England had never been established in New Jersey like it had been, for instance, in Virginia, so it had little to lose from dis-establishment, but it had been very dependent on its financial connections to Britain, and in particular to the SPG. Of the forty or so parishes and preaching stations active before the war only eight[6] sent a representative to the first diocesan state convention after the war (at Christ Church, New Brunswick in July 1785), and among the delegates were only three priests.
That is not to say that the Anglican church was bereft of supporters at this time. There had been plenty of SPG activity in New Jersey before the war and the effect of those efforts laid an ample groundwork for the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. In general, the church in New Jersey grew with the state during this period. By 1810 the number of active parishes had recovered from its post-war nadir to twenty-six and ministering clergy to fifteen.[8] There was steady growth under Bishop John Croes such that at the end of his tenure (1832) there were thirty-two congregations, eighteen clergy, and approximately eight-hundred communicants.
Under the second bishop, George Washington Doane, the Diocese experienced dramatic growth, due not only to his intense, and at times less-than-legal, “energetic episcopate”[10] but likely also to the fact that the Revolutionary generation had passed, and living generations did not harbor the same distrust of the Church of England. At his death in 1859, the Diocese had ninety-eight clergy, eighty-five parishes and missions, and approximately five-thousand communicants.[11]
William H. Odenheimer was the third bishop of the Diocese, serving through the Civil War, until 1874 when the Diocese split into the Dioceses of Southern New Jersey (now called the Diocese of New Jersey) and Northern New Jersey (now called the Diocese of Newark), a split occasioned by significant growth. Odenheimer continued his tenure with the Diocese of Northern New Jersey after 1874. Under Odenheimer, and before the split, the Diocese grew to include 152 clergy, 129 parishes and missions, and 12,176 communicants, representing approximately 1.2% of a state whose population had exploded in the intervening years to approximately one million residents.
In general the Episcopal Church in New Jersey during this period did not make waves politically.[13] Few Episcopalians became abolitionists, and many more supported the work of The American Colonization Society.[14] Even during the Civil War the Episcopal Church was the only majority-White Christian denomination that did not split over slavery. Much of the Church at this time saw itself as ministering to Whites, not Blacks. The denomination intentionally took a conciliatory approach to the conflict and to slavery out of fear of alienating constituents.[15] As a northern slave state, New Jersey took the lead in this approach. Such conciliation toward slavery can be seen throughout the period of gradual abolition in New Jersey and no doubt was a cause of much Black alienation from the denomination. However, beyond the institutional attitude of conciliation was an ongoing and active practice of participation in enslavement on the part of elite members of the denomination.
Two of the most influential priests in the formation of the Diocese were Uzal Ogden and Abraham Beach. These two were among the few who attended the first Diocesan convention and both ministered in the State for lengthy periods of time, shaping much of the future trajectory of the Diocese. Ogden’s family wealth was derived from the employment of enslaved labor at the Ringwood Iron Works[16] and he benefitted from this accumulated power and wealth through an appointment as rector of Trinity Church, Newark where he continued to affirm the institution.[17] Beach served as Rector of Christ Church New Brunswick for decades, during which time he countenanced the practice of owning slaves among his parishioners.[18]He himself enslaved Blacks on his estate and only freed them in his old age when his retirement annuities from his church work fully covered his expenses.[19] This practice among the clergy of building wealth through the enslavement of Blacks and then freeing them only when most convenient was also practiced by Bishop Croes, the first bishop of the Diocese. He is recorded as having practiced manumission immediately before he became legally liable for the care of his enslaved Blacks in their old age.[20] This kind of practice not only harmed those Blacks manumitted under these conditions, but often required support of those manumitted through almshouses due to the commonly destitute state of the newly manumitted.
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| The Right Rev. John Croes, D.D. Image from William Perry, The Bishops of the American Church (New York: 1897) |
The spate of church growth under Bishop Doane was, in many instances, underwritten by wealth derived from enslaved labor. Doane himself was able to act with such energy, in part due to the wealth he held that had been produced through enslavement of Blacks.[22] He was involved with the founding of many institutions, and courted southern donations, in part, by affirming the practice of slavery.[23] Among other schools, he was significantly involved with the board of trustees at General Seminary in New York, which became notorious for its support of the American Colonization Society at this time.
This willingness to work with and benefit from slavery at the highest levels of leadership in the Diocese also translated into lay comfort with the institution. One example comes from one of the prominent founders of Trinity Church, Princeton, Robert Stockton,[24] who gave a large percentage of the funds used to build the church. Stockton’s own comfort with slavery went beyond his own in-state holdings. At his Georgia estate he enslaved hundreds of Black Americans.[25]The wealth he derived from this practice allowed him to gain both significant political power, and power beyond government institutions, including in the Church. His geographically dispersed enslavement practices show that the ways the Church in New Jersey became established depended not only on the support of slavery in New Jersey, but on its protected exercise in other regions as well, including the South. Stockton’s significant involvement in the American Colonization Society, including his role in the conquering of the African territory that became Liberia, indicates the degree to which he was willing to control the fates of Blacks in order to impose his preferred (and highly racist) priorities.
Perhaps the most egregiously abusive actions on the part of a New Jersey Episcopalian during this time period came from Middlesex County judge Jacob Van Wickle.[26] Under the slavery codes of the time no sales out-of-state of enslaved persons were allowed without the express consent of the person being sold. This was particularly important during the period of gradual abolition because many Blacks then enslaved in New Jersey, would be ultimately freed after their legal term of service in New Jersey, but if they were sold into slavery in a state that allowed permanent enslavement, they would lose this legally enshrined promise of future freedom. Van Wickle sought to benefit from the arbitrage opportunity presented by higher valuations for enslaved Blacks in the deep South than were common in New Jersey.[27] He and his son ran a slave-trading-ring encouraging New Jersey owners to sell to his brother-in-law for higher than New Jersey market rates but significantly below valuations common in the deep South. Van Wickle forged papers of acquiescence for at least seventy-five enslaved Blacks, who were smuggled out of state. Eventually he was stopped, partly by concerned Quakers,[28] and partly by other slave-holding Episcopalians,[29] but he was never convicted of a crime even when it was clear that he had been breaking the law. Van Wickle is buried at St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood[30] along with other family members. His children were baptized there.
Before the Revolutionary war a significant number of enslaved Black Americans were exposed to Anglican worship and teaching. However, after the war, for the most part, free Black Americans went elsewhere. Of course, this was not universally true, but the attraction of worshipping communities (Methodist, Baptist, nascent AME) that would more readily affirm Black Americans’ religious experience, abilities, and leadership was strong. Those denominations that insisted on traditional, expensive, elite education (mostly accessible only to Whites) as the only acceptable avenue to the priesthood (e.g. the Episcopal Church), lost many faithful and gifted potential Black leaders who simply went where the exercise of their gifts was allowed or even welcomed. There were exceptions of course (e.g. Rev. Absalom Jones[31] in Philadelphia for instance) but this was the general pattern of the time, and the road for those who persisted was beset with racist obstacles.[32] Many prominent Black Christian leaders and writers in this period, such as George White and Jon Jea, articulate separation from an Anglican Church expression or background.[33] Black aspirants to the priesthood from around the country were routinely rejected at General Theological Seminary, where the Bishop of New Jersey served on the board of trustees.[34] The first Black American born in New Jersey to be ordained to the priesthood was Rev. Peter Williams Jr.,[35] though he became Episcopalian after leaving the state. The first Black Episcopal Church in New Jersey, St. Philip’s, was formed in 1856 in Newark,[36] however governance from the Diocese was highly paternalistic. This shows that some Black Episcopalians managed to persist in the faith in spite of overwhelming obstacles in the Diocese at this time. However, it is not hard to see why many Black Americans sought alternate institutional religious expressions when the prevailing attitudes and practices of elite White Episcopalians in New Jersey were so inhumane even toward Blacks who were fellow Christians.
Writing the history of the treatment of Black Americans in the Diocese of New Jersey during the period of gradual abolition is a massive undertaking and this document is only meant to serve as an initial, introductory treatment. Further research and documentation are ongoing.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] One might be similarly confused if one took the knowledge that the (Anglican) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was ostensibly founded for the catechism and baptism of Native American and Black slaves in colonial American to mean, like Nelson R. Burr did, that “The Church cherishes the Negro.” See Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), p. 224-28.
[2] Society of the American Colonization Society in New Jersey, “Proceedings of a Meeting Held at Princeton, New Jersey, July 14, 1824 to Form a Society in the State of New Jersey to Cooperate with the American Colonization Society,” July 24, 1824. MSS held at Trinity Church, Princeton archives.
[3] Jesse Bayker, Christopher Blakley, and Kendra Boyd, “His Name Was Will: Remembering Enslaved Individuals in Rutgers History,” in Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White, eds., Scarlet and Black Volume I: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016), p. 80.
[4] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 157-60.
[5] See for example Robert E. Hood, “From a Headstart to a Deadstart: The Historical Basis for Black Indifference Toward the Episcopal Church 1800-1860,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 51.3 (1982): 269-296. The alienation was not universal, but significant.
[6] Christ Church New Brunswick (the host church), Trinity Church Newark, St. John’s Church Elizabethtown, St. Peter’s Church Perth Amboy, Christ Church Shrewsbury, St. James Church Piscataway, St. Mary’s Church Burlington, and St. Andrew’s Church Mount Holly.
[7] Rev. Abraham Beach, Rev. Uzal Ogden, and Rev. John-Hamilton Rowland.
[8] WPA, Inventory of the Church Archives of New Jersey: Protestant Episcopal (Newark: The Historical Records Survey, 1940), p. 48.
[9] In a state with a population of approximately 320,823 people. At the end of his tenure the proportion of Episcopalians in New Jersey was still quite low: Less than 0.25% of residents were communicants. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, p. 478.
[10] He was reprimanded for financial impropriety. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 462-465; WPA, Inventory of the Church Archives of New Jersey: Protestant Episcopal, pp. 55-56.
[11] This translates into an approximate proportion of Episcopalian communicants of 0.83% within the general population of a state of 672,025 inhabitants; this represents a dramatic rate of growth during Doane’s tenure, while still accounting for only a small proportion of the overall population.
[12] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 465-466, 480.
[13] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 460-461.
[14] Which, through racist logic, supported sending Blacks back to Africa.
[15] Drawing perhaps the wrong lesson from the Revolutionary War.
[16] Which also enabled his father to serve as a founding member of Trinity Church Newark. He furnished the labor for its building. See William Wheeler, The Ogden Family in America (Philadelphia: Lippincott Co., 1907), p. 64.
[17] His sister married Peter Schuyler, another prominent Anglican whose wealth came from enslaved labor.
[18] Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White, eds., Scarlet and Black, Vol. 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), p. 181 n. 33.
[19] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 583-585.
[20] Bayker, Blakley, and Boyd, “His Name Was Will: Remembering Enslaved Individuals in Rutgers History,” p. 80.
[21] Graham Russell Gao Hodges (Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019], p. 59) describes an example of this phenomenon in the 1820’s in Cape May County.
[22] This wealth came from his wife. Eliza Greene Callahan Perkins had first been married to James Perkins, who was a wealthy slaveowner and slave trader. See “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery,” (Boston: Harvard University, 2022), p. 22: https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu.
[23] Such as at Trinity College, Hartford: https://dsp.domains.trincoll.edu/TrinityAndSlavery/george-washington-doane/.
[24] Later also a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, he was a founding parishioner who served on the first vestry at Trinity Church, Princeton. See Robert Field Stockton and John R. Thomson, “Subscription Book of 1827 to Build a Protestant Episcopal Church in the Borough of Princeton,” August 16, 1827. See also, The Rector, Wardens and Vestrymen of Trinity Church in the Borough of Princeton, “Certificate of Incorporation,” May 17, 1833. MSS held at Trinity Church, Princeton archives.
[25] U.S. Census 1830. According to this data there were at least 108 Blacks held as slaves on his plantation in Brunswick, Georgia at the time. See also R. John Brockmann, Commodore Robert F. Stockton (1795-1866) A Protean Man for a Protean Nation (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2009), pp. 72-73.
[26] Also spelled “Van Winkle.”
[27] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, pp. 157-60.
[28] Hodges, Black New Jersey, p. 79.
[29] Including James Parker, Jr. of St. Peter’s Church Perth Amboy. https://records.njslavery.org/s/doc/item/1388.
[30] Harry Macy, Jr., “The Van Wicklen/Van Wickle Family: Including its Frisian Origin and Connections to Minnerly and Kranchheyt,” The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 128.4 (October 1997): 250-51.
[32] See Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 201-202.
[33] See Graham Russell Hodges, ed., Black Itinerants of the Gospel: The Narratives of John Jea and George White (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 53, 130.
[34] The rejection of Alexander Crummell for admission to General was actually fought by Bishop Doane (See Craig Steve Wilder, “’Driven… from the School of the Prophets’: The Colonizationist Ascendence at General Theological Seminary,” New York History 93.3 [2012]: 157-185).
[36] Robert A. Bennett, “Black Episcopalians: A History From The Colonial Period To The Present,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 43.3 (1974): 238.
