EVENT: "'Til Earth and Heaven Ring" Service for Reparations Sunday, May 7, Trenton

 The Diocese of New Jersey Anti-Racism and Reparations Commissions will hold an evening prayer service this coming Sunday, May 7, 2023 at 4:00pm at Trinity Cathedral in Trenton, New Jersey. All are welcome. The service is entitled "'Til Earth and Heaven Ring" and will be oriented toward healing and gospel justice while honoring Bishop William Stokes for his strong support for racial justice ministries during his tenure. The Rev. Dr. Darrell Armstrong of Shiloh Baptist Church will preach. A reception will follow in Synod Hall at the Cathedral. The service will be viewable live remotely.

A History of Slavery at St. Peter's Church, Freehold

 A History of Slavery at St. Peter’s Church, Freehold

Address delivered by Rev. Dirk Reinken, March 25, 2023

Stations of Reparations Service, St. Peter’s Church, Freehold, New Jersey

Text prepared in cooperation with Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

 

When I came to St. Peter’s Church nine years ago, I met a parishioner, a person of color, whose last name was the same as one of the local streets, and I asked her if the street was named after her family… Her friend looked at me with a wry smile and said, “would you like to answer him, or should I?” And she said, “well, their people owned our people.” So I discovered that there was story that we [White Episcopalians] had not been telling and did not know about. 

From "The Battle of Monmouth Courthouse" by Benson J. Lossing,
in Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. LVII, p. 43.

I was delighted to discover that our founding priest, the Rev. George Keith, wrote in his Quaker days that Christians should not be owners of slaves.[1] What I missed was how close he was to people who did in fact practice slavery,[2] and how St. Peter’s itself received its land in Topanemus, where we began, and our first building from Thomas Boels,[3] a slave owner[4] and close friend of the Rev. Mr. Keith. We still own that property, and underneath all the vines is a story waiting to be uncovered. 

Unknown, George Keith (c. 1638 – 1716) (cropped), marked as public domain,
more details on Wikimedia Commons

Then I discovered, in the history[5] of our congregation written by a beloved rector in the 1960’s, that the Rev. Thomas Thompson, who served here from 1745-1750, worked [very] hard to catechize and Christianize the enslaved. He was written about very hagiographically. What was left out of the story was that [it was simply reproducing]… the viewpoint of Rev. Mr. Thompson from his own biography of his missionary voyages,[6] without questioning [his account]. [I later came to] discover that the Rev. Mr. Thompson became one of the first missionaries to Africa for a missionary society[7] that was funded, as Mr. Keith was also, by the practice of slavery,[8] and that Mr. Thompson… in modern day Ghana was a chaplain to the English company that ran the slave enterprise… He wrote a tract defending the practice of slavery as consistent with the principles of scripture and as the best possible vehicle for converting the person of African heritage.[9] He saw in the person from Africa a human being to be converted and a commodity to be used. I thought, “well maybe he just represented his age.” [However,] other Christian writers took the Rev. Mr. Thompson strongly to task in their own writings[10] demonstrating in that same time period the great difference of opinion that there was [between]  those who defended slavery for economic, or worse, reasons, and those who opposed it out of a reading of the gospel. 

There was also the Rev. Samuel [Cooke] who we shared with Christ Church, Shrewsbury, our sister church, and there was also the Rev. Mr. Alexander Innes, a close friend of our early clergy, [both of whom] practiced slavery. Our own property may have been given to us by those who owned slaves. But what is [certainly] clear… from the history of wills in New Jersey, is that many landowners in Freehold owned slaves, and as landowners in Freehold, many were likely a part of the St. Peter’s community. We know that [at least] two of the petitioners for our royal charter in 1736 enslaved others… the Throckmortons who are memorialized in the window right here counted in their will[11] no less than seven enslaved individuals… [and William Nichols,] the sheriff of Monmouth county… published … accounts[12] of those escaped individuals he arrested and returned to their enslavers.

This is just the beginning of the story since New Jersey was the last state in the north to end the practice of slavery and we have no reason to assume that St. Peter’s, [Freehold] was in any way different from the prevailing culture of the day. But what we can take great hope from is that we are not the people who came before us and that we are living into a future that God is seeking to build. We have begun a journey, but we are still at its beginning and there are still many stories left to uncover. As for me I take to heart the words attributed to our patron St. Peter: “be living stones built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.” And we pledge to be those living stones for the future that God is building.

 

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[1] See George Keith, An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping Negroes (New York: William Bradford, 1693).

[2] For instance, his relationships with Thomas Boels, Alexander Innes, and John Talbot.

[3] See Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), p. 498.

[4] Among the records showing this is the “Inventory of the personal estate” accompanying his will (recorded as “Boell, Thomas, of Freehold, Monmouth Co.”) which included multiple “nigrose [sic]” as reproduced in “Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey,” Volume XXLII, Calendar of New Jersey Wills, Vol. 1. 1670-1730 (William Nelson, 1901).

[5] Bernard McKean Garlick, A History of St. Peter’s Church, Freehold, New Jersey, 1702-1967 (Freehold, NJ: 1967).

[6] Thomas Thompson, An Account of Two Missionary Voyages: The One to New Jersey in North America, the Other from America to the Coast of Guiney (1758; repr., London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1937).

[7] The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.), a lay Anglican society.

[8] Through profits derived, not only from private donations of slavery derived wealth, but from directly owning and operating the Codrington Plantation in Barbados, on which hundreds of Africans were enslaved.

[9] It is entitled: “The African Trade for Negro Slaves, Shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Law of Revealed Religion.” He dedicated the work “to the worshipful committee of the company of merchants trading to Africa: in particular, to his much esteemed friend, William Devaines, Esq.; one of the committee; this treatise is addressed,” from “their obedient humble servant, Tho[mas] Thompson.” Among other assertions, he states regarding: “Whether slaves be proper subjects of trade. In denial hereof it is [alleged], that the setting to sale human creatures is violating the natural distinction of the species, and levelling men with beasts. But to this it may be answered, that every person is treated as a human being, who is treated according to his lawful state and condition. The buying a slave is taking him as what he is; and the sale does but signify, that his owner is willing to part with, and another has a mind to have him. Here then is no violation of humanity; and the property in such individual is transferable, like all other property.”

[10] Such as Granville Sharp, The just limitation of slavery in the laws of God, compared with the unbounded claims of the African traders and British American slaveholders. With a copious appendix: Containing, An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Thompson’s Tract in favour of the African Slave Trade. - Letters concerning the lineal Descent of the Negroes from the Sons of Ham. - The Spanish Regulations for the gradual Enfranchisement of Slaves. - A Proposal on the same Principles for the gradual Enfranchisement of Slaves in America. - Reports of Determinations in the several Courts of Law against Slavery, &c. (London: B. White, 1776).

[11] Specifically here, the will of Job Throckmorton (1714-1748), recorded in “Book E of Wills, p. 307, Trenton, N. J. Will of Job Throckmorton (Colts Neck), made 23 April, 1748” and republished in Frances Grimes Sitherwood, Throckmorton Family History: Being the Record of the Throckmortons in the United States of America with Cognate Branches (Bloomington, IL: Pantagraph Printing & Stationery Co., 1930).

[12] Such as one published in The Pennsylvania Gazette on July 4, 1729 (republished in Richard B. Marrin, ed., Runaways of Colonial New Jersey: Indentured Servants, Slaves, Deserters, and Prisoners, 1720-1781 [Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007], p. 268).

Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery: A Brief Introduction

 Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery, a Brief Introduction

Address Delivered by Kyra Pruszinski, March 25, 2023[1]

Stations of Reparations Service, St. Peter’s Church, Freehold, New Jersey

 

During the colonial era, the Princeton preaching station,[2] which laid some of the groundwork for the later founding of Trinity Church, Princeton, included such devoted loyalist Anglicans as Absalom Bainbridge and Richard Cochran, both of whom kept several Black people enslaved on their nearby plantations.[3] During the Revolution, a Black man enslaved by Bainbridge named “Prime” was confiscated by the revolutionary government and forced to serve in the continental army. He did not finally escape threats to his legal freedom until the New Jersey legislature intervened through a post-war legislative act to clarify his legal status.[4]

 

“Dr. Absalom Bainbridge.” Artist: James Sharples, 1752-1811. Courtesy: Frick Digital Collections.

 

Trinity was later established in 1833 in large part through the initiative and donations of the Stockton and Potter families, who remained the parish’s most influential members through the Civil War.[5] Both families enslaved people on their family estates in the Princeton area, as well as on their plantations in the state of Georgia. Senator Robert Field Stockton continued his family’s practice of enslaving people at their Morven estate in New Jersey until at least 1829, and possibly until 1839. He also owned a sugar plantation in Brunswick, Georgia on which at least 108 Black people were enslaved in 1830. His father-in-law, John Potter, and Potter’s sons James and Thomas Fuller, owned and managed the Coleraine Tweedside plantation in Georgia, where at least 423 people were enslaved.[6] The Stockton and Potter families profited directly from the exploitation of enslaved Black people, and donated large sums of that money to sustain Trinity Church. They controlled the affairs of the church, including the hiring of priests, through the end of the Civil War.[7] 

 

Mathew Benjamin Brady, Hon. Robert F. Stockton, N.J - NARA - 526010 (cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0

 

In addition to enslaving people, both Robert Stockton and John Potter supported the work of the American Colonization Society. The Society was an ostensibly anti-slavery organization, but promoted principles of White supremacy, race essentialism, and segregation, seeking to send freed Black people to Africa. Stockton and Potter spearheaded the establishment of the New Jersey chapter of the Society in 1824,[8] and Robert Stockton led the American military campaign to subdue native Africans and conquer African lands for the ACS colonial project that would become the nation of Liberia. 

 

Detail of “John Potter” by Thomas Sully, (1783-1872), oil on canvas. Courtesy Princeton University Art Museum. 

Trinity’s first five priests, hand-picked by the Stocktons and Potters, were also implicated in the institution of slavery. The first rector, Reverend George Emlen Hare,[9] inherited money from slavery[10] and kept Black servants.[11] His successor, Rev. Andrew Bell Paterson,[12] was from an influential family of enslavers[13] and oversaw the founding of a segregated school for Black children at Trinity.[14] This school was created to ensure Black children would have White teachers and to keep Black students out of the Princeton public school run by Betsey Stockton, a free Black woman formerly enslaved by the Stockton family.[15]

 

Schreiber & Son, Betsey Stockton, marked as public domain,
more details on Wikimedia Commons

The third rector, Rev. Joshua Peterkin,[16] enslaved Black people himself[17] and continued oversight of the segregated Trinity school. 

 

The Rev. Joshua Peterkin, courtesy of the Diocese of Maryland.

            The fourth rector, Rev. William Hanson,[18] was Peterkin’s brother-in-law, and did not appear to disrupt these patterns of relations at the church.[19] Trinity’s fifth rector, Rev. William Armstrong Dod, who served through the end of the Civil War,[20] was Robert Stockton’s son-in-law and brother to the high-profile enslaver and slavery apologist Albert Baldwin Dod.[21] Records suggest that Rev. Dod did not publicly disagree with his brother’s beliefs until the 1870s,[22] that is, well after his brother’s, and Stockton’s deaths, after he had retired, and after slavery had already been made illegal throughout the United States 

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[1] Text by Kyra Pruszinski, based on her research at Trinity Church, Princeton in cooperation with Abigail Edwards and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

[2] It was visited and supported by priests assigned to St. Michael’s Church in Trenton.

[3] James Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 31-33, 60.

[4] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, p. 32.

[5] 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.

[6] These facts are represented in the U.S. Census data. See the compilation by Abigail Edwards, “Trinity’s Founding Fathers,” (2022). MSS held at Trinity Church, Princeton archives.

[7] “If ever there was a ‘family church,’ it was Trinity during the more than three decades of active Stockton-Potter dominance from 1833 into the 1860s.” Nathaniel Burt, “The First Rectors: 1834-1866,” in Trinity Church Princeton, New Jersey: A History in Celebration of 150 Years 1833 to 1983 (Princeton, N.J.: Barracks Press, 1988), p. 12.

[8] 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.

[9] He served from 1834-1843.

[10] He was a scion of some of the oldest Philadelphia families, including the Willings and the Emlens, who derived significant wealth from slavery. See, for example, regarding Thomas Willing’s participation in the slave trade: Darold D. Wax, “Africans on the Delaware: The Pennsylvania Slave Trade, 1759-1765,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 50.1 (1983): 38-49; See also: https://foundersandslavery.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/updated-robert-morris/.

[11] As U.S. Census records of Princeton during his tenure (1840) indicate.

[12] He served from 1844-1851.

[13] The city of Paterson is named for his grandfather, one of New Jersey’s first U.S. Senators who, though ostensibly opposed to slavery, enslaved multiple Blacks during his lifetime, including while participating in the constitutional convention.

[14] Burt, “The First Rectors,” p. 15.

[15] See, among other accounts, Constance K. Escher, She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton: The Illustrated Odyssey of a Princeton Slave (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2022).

[16] He served from 1852-1855.

[17] See Mary Klein, “From the Archives: Bishop Whittingham’s Questionnaire of 1844 – Survey Says…,” August 19, 2020, available at: https://marylandepiscopalian.org/2020/08/19/from-the-archives-bishop-whittinghams-questionnaire-of-1844-survey-says/.

[18] He served from 1855-1859.

[19] Accounts of his rectorship suggest he was “unobtrusive.” See Nathaniel Burt, “The First Rectors,” p. 18.

[20] He served from 1859-1866.

[21] See Jessica R. Mack, “Albert Dod,” available at: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/albert-dod.

[22] See William Armstrong Dod, Paul of Tarsus: An Inquiry into the Times and the Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872), pp. 194ff.

NEWS: U.S. Govt. Should Pay Reparations to Black Americans - Darity & Mullen

Recent reporting has highlighted suggestions by Dr. William Darity of Duke University and co-author A. Kristen Mullen that the U.S. government pay approximately $14 trillion dollars in reparations to Black Americans. Their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2022) provides details about the plan, suggesting both that the Federal government facilitated the oppression of Black Americans, and that it is the only entity in a practicable position to pay the reparations. Such payments, on the order of $350,000 for every Black American, would do a great deal to combat the dramatic wealth disparities that exist between White and Black households, and could be accomplished without inducing dramatic inflation.