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| List of the Diocese of New Jersey clergy, including Rev. James C. Ward, from the Convention Proceedings Journal of 1830. |
The Rev. Ward was a schoolteacher in Philadelphia while canonically resident in Pennsylvania. His ordination was not an entirely traditional ordination though. He was ordained to the diaconate on the condition that he would not have voting rights in convention proceedings.[4] and even when in attendance he was not considered among the clergy composing the convention.[5] During his time in Pennsylvania he was under consideration for an appointment with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) as a teacher in Sierra Leone, but the appointment was never finalized.[6]
It is unclear where Ward taught when in New Jersey, or if he taught at all. In the 1830 convention journal nearly all other clergy have their church assignment listed,[9] but Rev. Ward does not. Marion M. Thompson Wright, in her magisterial treatment of Black education in New Jersey, does not mention him though she reviewed the diocesan records that refer to him.[10] It appears that she concluded that he did not end up teaching in New Jersey, or at least, not very much. Due to the ambiguity of the records, it is difficult to determine where Rev. Ward may have taught in the Diocese during his tenure.
In 1830 nine churches in the Diocese mention formalized regular Sunday Schools in their convention reports[11] including Christ Church, New Brunswick, St. Mark’s Church, Orange, St. Peter’s Church, Morristown, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, Christ Church, Newton, St. James Church, Piscataway, St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley, and St. John’s Church, Salem. By 1831 the Sunday School Society had reorganized its constitution and worked to formalize instruction and membership. According to their reports there were five churches running Sunday Schools that met the Society guidelines including 483 students, though most still-unaffiliated churches had some kind of Sunday School program.[12] There is no list of diocesan clergy in the 1831 convention journal, and no mention of Rev. James C. Ward.
By 1832 there were seven churches in the Diocese that had affiliated Sunday Schools and among all of those schools and hundreds of students there were a total of only 23 “coloured” children listed as students.[13] At this time the education of African-Americans in Episcopal Churches was, almost without exception, segregated. As such, it is possible that the Rev. Ward did not have adequate pupils among the Sunday Schools, and by extension, did not have adequate teaching opportunities (or pay) in the Diocese at that time to warrant continued residence. There is no record of a diocese-associated school for those of African descent at this time, either on Sunday or otherwise, unlike those in Pennsylvania and New York. New Jersey was one of the few colonies where such a school had never been founded by the S.P.G.[14] during the colonial era,[15] and by the time of Rev. Ward’s residency no such school appears to have been yet founded.[16]
According to the state convention journal of 1834, Trinity Church, Newark had just then started a segregated school for Black children.[17] It is possible that Rev. Ward taught there briefly, but it is unlikely and no evidence of this has been discovered. It is possible, though also unlikely, that Rev. Ward continued to work as a schoolteacher in Philadelphia while living in New Jersey during this period. However, it seems most likely that Rev. Ward had been invited, perhaps aspirationally, to the Diocese of New Jersey to teach African-American students at one or more of the churches with a significant segregated Sunday School, or to found an “African school” affiliated with one of the churches, but that the arrangement did not work out.
Bishop Croes’ letter to the convention of 1832 provides another terse update: the Rev. Ward had left the Diocese. “The Rev. James C. Ward (a coloured man) a Deacon in the Diocese, having made application to me for a letter dismissory to the Rt. Rev. Dr. Stone, Bishop of the Diocese of Maryland, it was granted to him and of course he no longer belongs to this Diocese.”[18]
It appears that this move was already in the works as early as the previous summer. Bishop Croes had written a favorable letter of reference for Rev. Ward on July 16, 1831 which he sent to Ward in Annapolis, Maryland.[19] Apparently Ward had either already moved, or was in the process of setting up what would be his next teaching job in Maryland. This would mean that Ward was resident in New Jersey for as little as under one year. Unfortunately Ward did not teach long in Maryland, passing away soon after his move in 1834.
Whatever the circumstances that led to Rev. Ward’s extremely brief tenure in the Diocese of New Jersey, we can at least conclude a few things. Firstly, Rev. Ward’s experience shows that Bishop Croes, who was an enslaver for much of his life, was willing to work with Black clergy, at least to some degree. He affirmed Ward’s ordination and welcomed him to the diocese. Secondly, however much support Rev. Ward received from the bishop, it did not translate into a stable teaching position in the diocese. There was likely not yet widespread support for Black clergy in any particular White churches in the diocese. Further, Ward would likely have needed a church affiliation to start a school of his own creation, and churches in the diocese, in addition to having limited established programs for Black pupils at the time, showed in the subsequent period a significant interest in hiring only White instructors for segregated parish schools.[20] All this is to say, Ward did not find the Diocese of New Jersey to be as hospitable a location for his teaching as Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) had been, or Maryland would be, and as a result, his tenure in New Jersey was fleeting. He remains, however, the first Black man to be counted among the clergy of the Diocese of New Jersey.
[1] George F. Bragg, History of the African-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore: Church Advocate Press, 1922), 15.
[2] Bragg, History, 185. Italics original. Bishop White was the bishop of Pennsylvania.
[3] Bragg, History, 185; See also General convention record for 1826. For record of some kind of proceedings against him in the Presbyterian Church see “Records of the Presbytery of New Castle, 1814-1834,” Journal of the Department of History (The Presbyterian Historical Society) of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 19.2 (1940): 93-97, here page 95. David L. Holmes (“The Making of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1826-1827: Part I: The Nestor’s Finest Hour” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 41.3 [1972]: 225-262, here page 260) reports his ordination as having occurred in 1825. This date accords with most Episcopal Church records.
[4] George Burgess, List of Person Admitted to the Order of Deacons in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, from A.D. 1785 to A.D. 1857 (Boston: A. Williams, 1874), 13.
[5] Holmes, “The Making of the Bishop of Pennsylvania,” 260.
[6] D. Elwood Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 37.
[7] John Croes, “Address,” in Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1830), 12.
[8] Croes, “Address,” in Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1830), 29.
[9] All save Ward and one other.
[10] M. M. Thompson Wright, The Education of Negroes in New Jersey (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1941).
[11] And they would have every incentive to do so.
[12] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Eighth Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1831), 34. Churches affiliated with the Society included Christ-Church, New Brunswick, St. John’s Church, Salem, St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood, Christ Church, Newton, and St. Mark’s Church, Orange.
[13] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1832), 33. Most of the churches had Sunday Schools of some kind, but not all had yet affiliated with the Sunday School Society. Churches with some kind of Sunday School included Christ Church, New Brunswick, St. Paul’s Church at Paterson, Trinity Church, Newark, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, St. James Church, Knowlton, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy, St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood, St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, St. Andrew’s Church, Mount Holly, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley, St. John’s Church, Salem, St. George’s Church, Penns Neck, St. Mark’s Church, Orange, Christ Church, Newton, and St. Luke’s Church, Hope.
[14] Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
[15] New Jersey is conspicuously missing from the accounts in Edgar Legare Pennington, “Thomas Bray’s Associates and Their Work Among the Negroes,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 48 (1938): 311-403. In his correspondence with the S.P.G. Rowland Ellis expressed an intention to teach a night school for those of African descent in Burlington in the winter of 1715-16 but it is unclear if he ever actually followed through, and certainly the intended “school” was never formalized. See Rowland Ellis to S.P.G., October 8, 1715, British Online Archives, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) Correspondence Collection: “American in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1635-1928,” A Series Letter Book Vol. 11, page 118.
[16] M. M. Thompson Wright mentions no school of this kind in The Education of Negroes in New Jersey.
[17] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 10.
[18] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 8.
[19] John Croes to Revd. James C. Ward, July 16, 1831; Record ID 108178, Accession number MA 365.121, The Morgan Library & Museum.
[20] See, for example, the example of Trinity Church, Princeton described in Kyra N. Pruszinski and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, ed., “Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery: A Brief Introduction,” Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (10 April 2023), https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html, last accessed October 1, 2023.
