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.

 

---

[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 

---

[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.  

NEWS: Stations of Reparations ENS Press Release

 The recent Stations of Reparations service sponsored by the Reparations Commission of the Diocese of New Jersey (which publicized significant findings from this project) was recently featured in a press release on the Episcopal News Service. The Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review is also mentioned. Thanks for the press ENS! Here's the video:

The History of Slavery at Christ Church, New Brunswick

The History of Slavery at Christ Church, New Brunswick

 

There have been several prominent and influential leaders at Christ Church, New Brunswick who have enslaved Blacks.[1] Among them are Philip French, the layman who gave the church its first property (a two-thousand-year lease at the rent of “one peppercorn [per year] only if demanded”)[2] on which the first building was erected and the current nave still stands (in 1742).[3] He published a runaway notice in the local newspaper seeking the return of “Claus” in 1741,[4] and on at least one occasion brought one of his enslaved Blacks (in 1767 “Toney”) to the Rev. Beach for baptism.[5]

Ralph Earl artist QS:P170,Q1350959, Ralph Earl - Samuel Seabury - NPG.84.171 - National Portrait Gallery,
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

            The Rev. Samuel Seabury, who served from 1754 to 1757, and was later the first bishop of the Episcopal Church, became an active enslaver during his time as the priest of Christ Church.[6] Seabury continued to accumulate more enslaved persons through his career. The Rev. McKean[7] and The Rev. Leonard Cutting[8] both enslaved or facilitated the enslavement of Black people. The Rev. Abraham Beach served as Rector of Christ Church New Brunswick from 1767-1784, during which time he countenanced the practice of owning slaves among his parishioners. He himself enslaved Blacks on his estate and only freed them in his old age when his retirement annuities from his church work fully covered his expenses. 

Rev. Abraham Beach 1740 -1828, marked as public domain,
more details on Wikimedia Commons, Ralph Earl creator QS:P170,Q1350959.

This practice among the clergy of building wealth through the enslavement of Blacks and then freeing them only when most convenient was also practiced by Bishop Croes, the first bishop of the Diocese. He served as the rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick starting in 1801 and served through his episcopate, until 1832. He is recorded as having practiced manumission immediately before he became legally liable for the care of his enslaved Blacks in their old age.[9] This kind of practice not only harmed those Blacks manumitted under these conditions, but often required support of those manumitted through almshouses due to the commonly destitute state of the newly manumitted.[10]

Perry, William Stevens, The Rt. Rev. John Croes,
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

The oldest person now interred in the Christ Church graveyard is: “Dinah (there is no surname, just Dinah). The records indicate that she was born sometime around 1760, was the property of James Dore. He came to New Brunswick via Novia Scotia and has family members buried here. Dinah died in 1866, in service in the Boggs household, whose family members are also buried in the graveyard of Christ Church. This makes her 106 years old at the time of her death... Her life spanned [from before] the Revolution to the Emancipation Proclamation. Born enslaved, died free.”[11]

The legacy of colonial times continued for Blacks at Christ Church well into the twentieth century. Blacks were members of the church but they were not seated with Whites. In the nineteenth and twentieth century Blacks were seated in the gallery, along with those who could not afford pew rents. When pew rents were abolished in the early 1920s the decision was made to relocate the organ from the chancel to the gallery displacing the Black members of the church. Taking that as an indication that they were not particularly welcome, the displaced African-American members formed their own parish, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in New Brunswick, a prominently Afro-Anglican mission parish. Today Christ Church is a multi-cultural, multi-racial congregation with a significant African-American membership, with many immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. In 2013 the parish called its first African American priest, the Rev. Joanna Hollis:

The Rev. Joanna Hollis, rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick
(photo by Rev. Beth Rauen Sciaino)

And so here I am, the rector of a parish with a long history of slavery. Every Sunday I stand in the chancel and look down at the cross that marks that Bishop Croes is buried underneath my feet. I walk back to the church and read the list of rectors knowing the history of those whose names are written above mine. When I look at the pictures and the sketches of all the former rectors, I notice that while I am not the first woman rector of Christ Church, one thing is not like the other. I do not take lightly the significance of my presence as the first Black rector of Christ Church. And I know that for some of our little ones, I am who they are growing up with as their priest. I am their normal. And yet I link the far past to the present by virtue of my own enslaved ancestors and pray that I am doing them proud. And I pray that I am doing right by Dinah and by the many enslaved people who were connected with Christ church. I quite literally am their wildest dream. Yet there is still so much more work to do; So much to atone for. And with God’s help we can do what needs to be done.[12]

---

[1] This reading was delivered by Jonathan Gloster, vestry member of Christ Church, New Brunswick on March 25, 2023 at the “Stations of Reparations” service at St. Peter’s Church, Freehold, New Jersey. Based in part on text provided by Jolyon Pruszinski.

[2] Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, p. 546.

[3] Burr, p. 546.

[4] “Run Away on the 23rd of August Past from Philip French,” American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia), August 27, 1741, reprinted in 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), 17. See also Marisa Fuentes and Deborah Gray White, Scarlet and Black, Vol. 1 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 181 n. 32.

[5] “Some Early Records for Christ Church, New Brunswick, and Saint James Episcopal Church, Piscataway: Marriages, Baptisms and Burials, 1758–1759 and 1767–1784,” Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey 91 (January 2016): 8. See also Fuentes and Gray White, 181 n. 33.

[6] This occurred through a dowry gift upon his marriage to Mary Hicks in 1756, though Seabury’s father had also been an enslaver.

[7] McKean served Christ Church from 1757 to 1763, married the granddaughter of Gov. Lewis Morris (who accumulated vast wealth through slavery), and as such came into ownership of a plantation on the Raritan.

[8] Early in his career, Cutting ran plantations for wealthy enslavers. He later served Christ Church from 1764 to 1766.

[9] Bayker, Blakley, and Boyd, “His Name Was Will: Remembering Enslaved Individuals in Rutgers History,” p. 80.

[10] Graham Russell Gao Hodges (Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019], p. 59) describes an example of this phenomenon in the 1820’s in Cape May County.

[11] Text furnished by Rev. Joanna Hollis of Christ Church, New Brunswick, from the planned virtual graveyard tour of Christ Church graveyard.

[12] Concluding address by the Rev. Joanna Hollis, rector, Christ Church, New Brunswick.

EVENT: Stations of Reparations Liturgy (Saturday 3/25/23)

From Good News in the Garden State: "The Reparations Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey offers a special worship and reflection service for the entire diocese to bring awareness of the call for Reparations for the legacy of slavery. In the context of  Scripture, prayer, and song, we’ll hear stories of Colonial Era participation in enslavement by clergy and lay leaders in Anglican parishes that are now part of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey.  Please spend part of your weekend at Stations of Reparations as part of your observance of Lent. This family event is hosted by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 33 Throckmorton Street, Freehold this Saturday, March 25th at 11:00 AM. The service will also be live-streamed on YouTube at St. Peter’s Church Freehold. The idea for a Liturgy of Stations for Reparations emerged from the History Working Group of the Reparations Commission as they began to digest the complicity of Colonial Era Anglican Churches in enslavement. The Commission believes it is essential that these stories be told in many ways, including in the context of worship." - Text from the article contributed by Rev. Jack Zamboni. See the full article on the Diocesan website. 

VIDEO: Initial Findings of the Reparations Commission Racial Justice Review

 

This is the summary of initial findings presented at the Diocesan convention March 4, 2023.

TRANSCRIPT:

Greetings friends. My name is Jolyon Pruszinski, I’m a Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Princeton University and since this past fall I’ve been serving as the Reparations Commission Research Historian for the Diocese. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today to share about some of our initial findings from our research into the history of the Diocese with respect to slavery and the oppression of Black Africans and African-Americans.

There was little Anglican presence in what later became New Jersey when the British took it from the Dutch in 1664, but slavery was already well established. The British continued to employ slavery in both East and West Jersey as part of their goal to establish a plantation economy in the colonies. During this time the Crown operated a monopoly on the transatlantic slave trade with the colonies (through the Royal African Company) and in the Caribbean colonies Anglicans helped create the legal and linguistic conventions of associating “White” with “free” and “Christian” and “Black” with “slave” and “pagan.” These conventions were imported into the Jerseys, especially East Jersey by Barbadian transplants who brought enslaved Africans with them as part of an early speculative land grab. White settlers were compensated with as much as 150 acres of land for each enslaved person they brought with them. In 1704 many of these influential Anglican colonists worked to establish the legal approaches to slavery developed in the Caribbean across the whole, now unified, colony of New Jersey. Manumissions were severely discouraged, and in support of formation of these slavery codes, the staff of the Archbishop of Canterbury sent draft legislation to New Jersey legislators seeking to ensure that baptism of an enslaved Black person would not be allowed as grounds for manumission. This provision, through the efforts of influential Anglicans, was incorporated into the legislation and became colonial law.

            During this time the Anglican church was looking to become better established in the colony, which was then peopled mostly with dissenters who were not very interested in the Church of England. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (or SPG), a voluntary Anglican missionary organization, was formed in 1702 to support the development of the church in the colonies and it began sending priests. These priests worked in concert with local elite Anglicans to establish congregations and by the end of the colonial period there were approximately 24 churches established in the colony and a similar number of preaching stations. The Anglican church never became the official church of the colony so financial support was provided by local congregations and the SPG. Local congregations were expected to pay for building and upkeep and to provide some support for a priest, and the SPG provided the bulk of the base salary to the priests, though the Crown also furnished an initial bounty for the sending of many priests. Because the crown was directly profiting from the slave-trade and because the SPG derived significant income from its plantation in Codrington, Barbados (which enslaved hundreds of Africans) we should understand the financial backing for priests in New Jersey at this time to be the product of enslaved labor.

            But even more directly, the financial backing for building and establishing Anglican churches in colonial New Jersey came from using enslaved labor. Most the wealthiest Anglicans in the colony at this time were participating fully in the plantation economy and enslaved Black Africans. Col. (and later governor) Lewis Morris, for instance,  owned a mine at Tinton Falls in the early 1700s on which he enslaved at least 65 Africans. He was involved in the establishment of the SPG and in the founding of a few different congregations (including Christ Church, Shrewsbury, and St. Michael’s, Trenton). He was probably the most prolific enslaver at that time in all of the American colonies. Col. Peter Schuyler, from the well-known Schuyler family, was heavily involved in the establishment of a few different New Jersey churches as well (including Trinity, Newark). His wealth came from his plantation and from the inheritance of his father’s copper mine in what is now North Arlington. His father was the wealthiest British colonist in the Americas at the time, and operated his mine for decades with enslaved labor. Perhaps a bit better known is Governor William Franklin, son of Ben Franklin, who gave generous gifts to help establish a few different New Jersey churches (including St. Mary’s, Burlington). His wealth was, in part, a product of slavery.

            And it was not just the laity that were involved in enslaving Africans and African-Americans. Many priests came to the colony, not merely to establish the church, but to participate in and benefit from the plantation economy. Several of the longest-serving and best established and influential priests who served in colonial New Jersey (such as Alexander Innes, Edward Vaughan, and Samuel Cooke) owned plantations, enslaved Blacks, and fostered a culture of support for the institution of slavery in their congregations. For example, Rev. Thomas Thompson, who served five years in New Jersey (including at Shrewsbury, Middletown, Freehold, and Allentown), and went on to become the first Anglican missionary to Africa, wrote a very influential treatise supporting the institution of slavery and praising its utility for converting African slaves. Thompson’s work shows that the Anglican missionary attentions devoted toward enslaved Blacks during this period were not really benevolent. These attentions were in almost every way, self-serving for White Anglicans, particularly in New Jersey where free Whites were, in general, not interested in the Anglican Church. As such, the potential to develop loyalty among enslaved Africans was viewed as politically and economically useful. This fact became crystal clear when, the British offered them freedom in the rebelling American colonies during the Revolutionary War. The British had been happy to enslave Africans when that benefitted the Crown economically, and were ready to free them when that appeared likely to give them an advantage in different circumstances. Thousands of enslaved Blacks escaped their bondage during this time as a result of these offers of freedom and the population of the enslaved in New Jersey did drop markedly as a result of the War.

            After the war the Anglican Church in the state was in disarray as many of the priests had fled and worship at almost every Anglican church in the state had been very interrupted. The state of New Jersey kept slavery intact after the war and the nascent Episcopal church continued to use it for its benefit. It was not until 1804 that New Jersey voted to enact gradual abolition, the last northern state to formalize legislation of this kind. And while the legislation promised freedom after 21 to 25 years of service to African-Americans born into slavery after 1804, immediate effect of the law was to shore up the institution. 

In the meantime, the most influential priests in the founding of the Diocese during this post-revolutionary period, the Revs. Abraham Beach and Uzal Ogden both kept enslaved Blacks and derived significant income from industry and farming using enslaved labor. They fostered a culture of support for the institution in their churches and the Diocese and many influential laity during this time continued to own slaves, even laity who identified as abolitionists such as James Parker Jr. of St. Peter’s, Perth Amboy. However, most of the laity who enslaved Blacks were not abolitionists, such as Senator Robert Stockton of Trinity, Princeton who was influential in the racist American Colonization Society, used force to seize what became Liberia to support the colonization project, enslaved Blacks himself in New Jersey, and kept a sizable plantation in Georgia where he kept over one hundred blacks enslaved at any given time. 

            However perhaps the most notorious Episcopalian enslaver during Gradual Abolition was the corrupt Middlesex County Judge Jacob van Wickle. During this time the enslaved had to consent to sale out of state, as such a sale could result in the alteration of their status from “slaves for a term” to permanently enslaved. Van Wickle sought to profit from such interstate sales and so forged dozens upon dozens of papers of acquiescence, even going so far as to claim that the cries of infants constituted consent. His ring also kidnapped free Blacks in order to sell them south. He and his family were closely associated with St. Peter’s Spotswood, where he is buried.

            It is perhaps unsurprising that such actions were normative among the elite Episcopal laity of the time because slavery was left unchallenged by the early bishops. The first consecrated Bishop of the Diocese, John Croes actually enslaved blacks himself and would even manumit them just prior to becoming legally liable for their financial support in old age. The second bishop, George Washington Doane, left the institution unchallenged and sought to curry favor with wealthy slave-owning southerners to garner financial support for his projects. The wealth which allowed him to serve as bishop, derived from his wife, was the product not merely of profiting from slave labor, but from the transatlantic slave trade itself.

            While many New Jersey Blacks did not feel welcomed or humanely treated in the Diocese at this time, some persisted in the denomination and sought to carve out a way of being Black and Episcopalian in spite of paternalistic treatment, segregation, and other horrific challenges. The first Black congregation in the diocese, St. Philip’s, was founded in Newark in 1856. After New Jersey was forced by the 13^th amendment to end slavery following the civil war and the diocese was split into the Diocese of Newark and the Diocese of Southern New Jersey (now known as the Diocese of New Jersey) the difficulties Black Episcopalians suffered did not cease but transformed into a new set of challenges. The development of Jim Crow laws, the resurgence of the KKK, and the ongoing White efforts to disempower Black Episcopalians in the Diocese are all subjects of our ongoing historical review. So to sum up:

 

• Anglicans and the Anglican Church were fully involved in the enslavement of Blacks in colonial and antebellum New Jersey.

• The church and its laity worked to create a legal establishment of slavery in the state.

• Many of the priests, bishops, and laity sought to (and did) benefit financially from slavery.

• Their churchly attentions to enslaved Blacks were limited and largely for self-interested reasons, and few influential New Jersey Anglicans or Episcopalians fully opposed slavery.

• All colonial era churches, and most if not all ante-bellum churches in the Diocese were established through the use of funds connected directly to slavery.

 

Our review is ongoing and we are looking to move into more recent history going forward, including taking oral histories. We are publishing findings on our blog and we want to invite you to get involved in researching your parish history, as some parishes have already begun to do. Please be in touch if you want to get involved with this work. My own contact information can be found on the blog. Thank you for taking the time to listen, and to take seriously this difficult history as going forward we consider together how best to acknowledge, repent, and repair the harms that continue to shape our life as a church to this day. Thank you.