ANGLICAN SLAVERY PILGRIMAGE - SITE #4 LITURGY

SITE VISIT #4 at SANDY HOOK OVERLOOK

(Mount Mitchill Scenic Overlook, Atlantic Highlands, NJ)[1]

The location from which the first group of Black Americans enslaved by the Van Wickle ring were smuggled on the Mary Ann in early 1818).


Historical Reading[2]

 

James Gigantino, in his recent book, The Ragged Road to Abolition, about the gradual abolition era in New Jersey, describes one enslaver’s actions as especially heinous: Middlesex County Judge Jacob Van Wickle, who used his standing as a judge to facilitate an illegal kidnapping and slave trading ring for his own family’s profit. A number of scholars and public history projects[3] have lately documented many aspects of his actions.

One largely neglected part of this story, however, is that Van Wickle acted as he did while serving as a committed and influential leader at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Spotswood, New Jersey. Neither he, nor his immediate church community saw anything wrong with what he was doing from the standpoint of Episcopal faith practice at the time. He was never removed from church leadership and there is no record of any church censure for his actions. In fact, other leaders from his church helped to cover up his actions. What he did is not only appalling in retrospect, but the public outcry at the time shows that many, at least outside of his church, considered it a sensational transgression even then.

            In 1795 Van Wickle married Sarah Morgan and thereafter became inextricably connected with Morgan family financial concerns related to plantation ownership in Pointe Coupee Parish Louisiana. His professional life of many decades was spent as a judge in Middlesex County, New Jersey… 

During this time, the New Jersey legislature passed its gradual abolition legislation in 1804, limiting the number of years enslaved persons born after that date could remain enslaved to at most 25 years (for men).[4] Soon after, in 1808, federal law ended the legal importation of enslaved persons to the United States.[5] One effect of this change was to increase the volume of domestic inter-state slave trading, since no additional enslaved persons could be brought into the U.S. This limitation on supply, combined with the increase in interstate slave trading, created a problem for enslaved persons in New Jersey. They were now in the very great danger of being sold or moved to states that had no gradual abolition law and where their promise of ultimate emancipation would not be upheld. The New Jersey legislature responded to this issue by passing further legislation in 1812 preventing the sale out-of-state of enslaved persons without their express consent.[6] This legislation, combined with the gradual abolition law, depressed the sale value of the enslaved in New Jersey markets since their enslavement was legally temporary and they were not easily transferrable to other markets. Meanwhile, the federal ban on importation had dramatically increased the value of already enslaved persons in the South. Van Wickle and his family saw this valuation discrepancy between the local slave markets as an opportunity for massive profit through arbitrage.

            The consent required by law in New Jersey to transfer an enslaved person out-of-state had to be verified by a judge of the county Court of Common Pleas. In Middlesex County, that was Van Wickle. His family members and co-conspirators canvassed their contacts, including many politically connected individuals in the state, soliciting the sale of enslaved Black people. When they wanted to acquire more, they engaged their henchmen in kidnapping, deceitful recruiting through promises of paid labor, and by the purchase of imprisoned free blacks being held by local jails for being apprehended without papers…Then Van Wickle would use the authority of his office to forge papers of acquiescence to allow the export of these enslaved Black people, under color of law, to the Morgan family plantations in Louisiana. He even claimed that the cries of infants constituted consent...[7]

Van Wickle’s notoriety among slavery researchers is one thing. Less well known is the fact that he was a devoted and celebrated Episcopalian and an integral member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Spotswood, New Jersey for well over half a century, including the entire period of the operation of the “ring.” 

Van Wickle was baptized as an infant,[8]  but it seems unlikely that this was a pro forma baptism since as a very young adult[9] he was already serving on the vestry of St. Peter’s. This began coincident with his older brother Evert’s service as church clerk in 1787.[10] Spotswood was very clearly their family church. Jacob’s wife and children were later baptized at St. Peter’s, and he and his family are listed first on the parish list of communicants in 1823.[11] Such pride of place on the list indicates that he was held in high regard in the church, even in the immediate aftermath of the slavery ring controversy. He served on the vestry periodically during his time at St. Peter’s, but most consistently held the office of church warden starting in 1810. He continued  in this role without interruption to the time of his death in 1854.[12]  In summary, he was a very central member of the church lay leadership well before the slave ring affair, during it, and long after it. Just before his death he gave a very large sum of money for the building of the second church building,[13] which is the building in use by St. Peter’s today…

 

Read the names of the enslaved:

The first group of thirty-nine enslaved people transported out of New Jersey through the actions of the Ring left from Sandy Hook aboard the Mary Ann on March 10, 1818.[14] These are their names: Peter, 15; Simon, age unknown (a free person); Margaret Coven, age unknown (a free person); Sarah, 21; Dianna, 7 months; Rachel, 22; Regina, 6 weeks; Hager, 29; Roda, 14; Mary, 2; Augustus, 4; Flora, 23; Susan, 7 months; Harry, 14; James, 21; Elmirah, 14; George, 16; Susan Watt, 35; Moses, 16; Lydia, 18; Betty, 22; Patty, 22; Bass, 19; Christeen, 27; Diannah, 9; Dorcas, 1; Claresse, 22; Hercules, 2; Lidia, 22; Harriett Jane, 3; Bob; Rosanna; Claus; Ann; Rosino, child; Jenette; Charles, child; Elias, child; Robert, child.

 

Prayer refrain:

Emmanuel, God-with-us, give us courage to awaken to and repent for our history of enslavement and systemic racism in New Jersey. As we seek to repair and restore our communities, may we trust that you charge us, O God, with co-creating a world that is loving, liberating, and life-giving for all. Amen.







ENDNOTES

[1] From the west, take Rte. 36 / Ocean Ave east to jug-handle signs for “Red Bank / Scenic Road.” Follow signs for the park. See www.monmouthcountyparks.com. Any preferred Sandy Hook location may be substituted for this particular location.

[2] From Pruszinski, Anglican Slavery in New Jersey.

[3] See the presentation from the Lost Souls Memorial Project, “Inside the Van Wickle’s Slave Ring,” (https://lostsoulsmemorialnj.org), the material published by the East Brunswick Historical Society, “Van Wickle and Morgan Slave Ring Leaders East Brunswick, NJ (1818),” “The 1619 Project” article by Bailey, “They Sold Human Beings Here,” the Rutgers University Scarlet and Black Research Center article “Removal to Louisiana: The Van Wickle Slave Ring,” Fitzpatrick “New Jersey State Archives Van Wickle Slave Ring Free Digital Collection,” and the State of New Jersey, “Documents at the New Jersey State Archives relating to the Van Wickle Slave Ring.”

[4] “An act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” February 15, 1804, Acts 28th G.A. 2nd sitting.

[5] See “An Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight,” passed March 2, 1807.

[6] “An act supplemental to the act entitled ‘An act respecting slaves.’”

[7] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 158.

[8] Beyond, of course, the record of his infant baptism on June 24, 1770 (less than two months after birth); See Reichner, “Nicasius de Sille Bible,” 128.

[9] Today he would be considered a minor (sixteen or seventeen) at the age when he began to serve on the vestry of St. Peter’s. Grace, History of St. Peter’s, 78.

[10] He was the first clerk listed in the vestry minutes according to Grace, History of St. Peter’s, 12. At the close of the eighteenth century, the church had also purchased a home from Evert to be used as the rectory; Grace, History of St. Peter’s, 14.

[11] According to Macy’s notes on the parish register in Macy, “The Van Wicklen/Van Wickle Family,” 241-51.

[12] Grace, History of St. Peter’s, 73.

[13] Grace, History of St. Peter’s, 20.