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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
[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).
