PART 3: Colonial Era Considerations and Leads
The importance of research into colonial era history for the churches founded during that period is clear, but many churches founded later should also be doing this work for a number of reasons. Firstly, because many churches founded later were birthed, or planted, with the support of a colonial era parish.[1] Thus, the financial establishment of the founding parish and its relation to slavery is relevant for the financial establishment of the later parish. Not only so, but the Church of England established as many preaching stations as churches in New Jersey during the colonial era.[2] Many of these preaching stations went on to develop into churches after the colonial era, but prior to becoming churches, the preaching stations were supported by colonial priests and established parishes, many of whom participated in New Jersey’s plantation economy, to say nothing of those lay Anglicans who directly supported the preaching station ministry.[3] Moreover, a number of churches in our diocese today were formed from mergers with colonial or early-republic-era parishes,[4] and certainly the diocese itself has received the proceeds on occasion from the liquidation of colonial era church property.[5]
So, clearly, many parishes beyond those parishes founded in the colonial era should be engaged in colonial era research in order to best understand, not only their dependence in their founding upon funds from enslaved labor, but also the ideological and theological positions and presuppositions that shaped the diocese from its outset and which produced the culture and attitudes of its later churches. But what should be considered in such research? What should researchers be aware of?
As we’ve described elsewhere,[6] slavery was not merely legal, but was encouraged both by the Crown, and by many elite Anglicans and priests. The legal system was set up, in part by Anglicans, to enable it, and the system of law enforcement, in which Anglicans were often influential,[7] worked to ensure its smooth functioning. Most agriculture in New Jersey’s plantation economy was occurring at the subsistence level. That means that farming of any large property involved the use of either hired labor, or, more typically, enslaved labor. Many churches derived income from “glebes,” a term for church owned agricultural lands rented out for farming. Such large-scale agriculture on church lands also typically involved enslaved labor.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) was the Anglican organization sending priests to the colonies at this time. Its funding was partly derived from the operations of its large plantation in Barbados, which was run using the labor of hundreds of enslaved Africans at a time. Thus all income for those priests serving in New Jersey in the colonial era was derived, in part, from profits of enslaved labor.[8]
As can be seen from these general observations, the structures of oppression operating through the use of enslavement in the plantation economy of colonial New Jersey were clearly intertwined with many aspects of Church funding and life. Though many records from the colonial era have been lost, the overall picture of New Jersey society generally, and the Anglican Church specifically, allow many conclusions to be drawn about individual colonial era churches’ complicity in slavery. However, the further details on a church by church basis matter a great deal and it cannot be said that more than a start has been made in parish-level research. As such, many historical resources for tracing parish histories in this research area have yet to be analyzed.
Of course, the most critical information to gather at the outset is information about who the leaders and members of each congregation were. A few parishes still have parish registers from the colonial era and these should be digitized for the benefit of future researchers. Such registers sometimes contain information about baptisms of the enslaved. In some instances the Diocese holds scans of early documents in its archives.[9] Regarding colonial era New Jersey priests, the most exhaustive primary sources available are the SPG letter archives. Nelson Burr’s The Anglican Church in New Jersey[10] is a helpful reference for finding leads as you are starting to work with this archive, but the archives themselves are directly available as digital scans through the British Archives Online.[11] Various other sources of information are available for learning about parish leadership as well. The most widely accessible are early New Jersey legal documents, including Church-related legal documents such as charters and deeds. These have often been published and many are available online,[12] but also through local libraries, state archives, and research libraries. Such documents often list lay church leaders who were party to or witnesses of legal proceedings, but also furnish useful information about church property.[13]
Once it has been determined who was involved with a particular church, research can begin on the ways those specific individuals were involved with enslavement. There are a variety of possible avenues for investigation. Due to the increasing interest in New Jersey’s history of slavery, many institutions have begun to work to collect and organize their records that help illuminate that history. Among these are local libraries, historical societies, museums,[14] municipal and county governments,[15] colleges and universities,[16] and the State of New Jersey.[17] Local institutions may be able to point you to relevant resources on the colonial history of slavery in your area. Some of these records have been formally published, and some excellent resources have been made available online. Often at least a record of the existence of records can be found through many institutional websites, especially at universities and the state level. Evidence of engaging in enslavement can be found in escaped slave advertisements from newspapers,[18] in census documents, in wills,[19] and a variety of other colonial era legal documents.
[1] For instance, the now defunct St. Mary’s, Colestown (founded in 1703), at the time of its destruction by fire in 1899, was considered a “mother church” by many nearby Camden area churches (Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 573).
[2] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 114-15.
[3] See, for example the brief history of Trinity Church, Princeton published in the DNJRJR: https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html.
[4] For instance, St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Elizabeth, NJ was formed through serial mergers incorporating a number of historic congregations including Christ Church, Elizabeth (formed 1853) and Trinity Church, Elizabeth (formed in 1859).
[5] Such as from the liquidation of the property of Christ Church, Allentown around 1940 (founded in 1730).
[6] In the DNJRJR: https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2022/11/new-jersey-anglicans-and-slavery-in.html.
[7] Including through the system of jails and sheriffs.
[8] The initial bounty paid to priests when they were first sent, known as the King’s or Queen’s Bounty, also came partly as a result of the Crown’s monopoly profits from the Atlantic slave trade.
[9] Reach out to the diocesan archivist and historiographer, as of the date of publication, Rev. Cn. Richard Wrede, to see what he can find for you in the diocesan archives.
[10] Although there are significant problems with how Burr deals with slavery and racism. See the recent review which appears in DNJRJR: https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/11/review-anglican-church-in-new-jersey-by.html.
[11] See British Archives Online, S.P.G. Correspondence at https://microform.digital/boa/collections/11/america-in-records-from-colonial-missionaries-1635-1928.
[12] https://www.google.com/books has many of these. A good start can be made with Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New Jersey, a multivolume series published from the archives of the State of New Jersey which is in the public domain. See also New Jersey, Laws of the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Abraham Blauvelt, 1800).
[13] If you are having trouble knowing where to start, or have difficulty finding much about the early years of your colonial church, Nelson Burr’s The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), focuses on the colonial era, and is held in many Episcopal church libraries in the state. While it is not a great guide to issues of slavery and racism, it does reference many useful primary documents, and if you can read between the lines and filter its rosy perspective, it can provide some helpful leads, at the very least providing some information on key early leaders in most churches. You can then research the ties these individuals have to slavery.
[14] E.g. the Morven Museum: https://www.morven.org/slavery-at-morven.
[15] E.g. the "Gloucester County Slavery Records" at http://www.westjerseyhistory.org/docs/gloucesterrecs/slavery/.
[16] E.g. Rutgers University (https://scarletandblack.rutgers.edu/), Monmouth University (https://guides.monmouth.edu/RaceRacismPolicing) , Princeton University (https://slavery.princeton.edu), and Princeton Theological Seminary (https://slavery.ptsem.edu).
[18] Many of which have been published in Richard B. Marrin, ed., Runaways of Colonial New Jersey: Indentured Servants, Slaves, Deserters, and Prisoners, 1720-1781 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007), and Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, eds., “Pretends to Be Free”: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (New York: Garland, 1994).
[19] See, for example, Harry B Weiss, The Personal Estates of Early Farmers and Tradesmen of Colonial New Jersey, 1670-1750 (Trenton: New Jersey Agricultural Society, 1971).
[20] Many archival resources for period newspapers are available online, including the databases developed through the National Digital Newspaper Program https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/. Various online resources for digitized archival newspapers can be accessed through most local libraries. Many sermons and other publications appear in the “Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue” and the “Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue,” resources also accessible through many library systems.
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