Early African Mission Giving (Foreign) in the Diocese of New Jersey (1835-1865)

Figure 1: Promotional Materials for the Episcopal African Mission. Detail of “Episcopal 

Mission Buildings, Fishtown or Fairhaven, Nine Miles North of Cape Palmas, W. A.,” 

from Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., An Historical Sketch of the African 

Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. (New York: Foreign Committee, 1884), 14.

The first instance in the Diocese of New Jersey of reported funds being specifically and separately designated for “African mission” giving was in 1835.[1] This followed the exhortation given by Bishop Doane in his 1834 diocesan convention address,[2] in which he encouraged churches within the diocese to support the fledgling Episcopal mission to the region of west Africa that would later become Liberia.[3] In 1835 six of the thirty-two churches in the diocese took up this call and among them collected a total of $18.15.[4]
            At this time, dedicated ministry to African-Americans within the diocese was very limited. According to diocesan records[5] St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown periodically ran a segregated Sunday School starting in 1818, initially said to have 20 students of color,[6] but it does not appear to have been in operation consistently. Baptisms of African American “domestics” are specifically mentioned in the diocesan reporting of St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood, and we know that multiple other churches performed similar baptisms at this time. In 1832 the diocesan Sunday School Society noted 23 “coloured children” participating in its schools,[7] but this modest number only accounts for five percent of total students. In 1834 Trinity Newark reported that it was running a segregated “coloured infant school,” but no similar school for older children. All this is to say, only limited attention had been given to ministry specifically to African-Americans in the diocese at the time. 
            Over the following decades, giving to the African mission continued, and generally increased (see Table 1),[8] however, in many ways this giving operated as an outlet for White Episcopal “philanthropy” ostensibly aimed at Black people, while never actually challenging either the status quo of their treatment within the Diocese or White Episcopalian control.
            The African mission of the Episcopal church was born of much the same impetus that formed the American Colonization Society (ACS), an organization committed to removing freed Black people from the United States and using them to colonize Africa.[9] This idea was promoted as beneficial for Africans, who would receive the influence of western culture and Christianity from African-American settlers, for freed African-Americans, who would have an opportunity to thrive independently from Whites (assuming they could never do so in a majority-White society), and for White Americans who felt threatened by the presence of free Black people in the United States and that the presence of free Blacks created a difficulty for the effective functioning of a slave society. Though the work was presented as “charitable,” on each of the aforementioned counts the plan was clearly racist, and nearly all African Americans rejected the scheme and the ACS.[10] Nevertheless, the Episcopal Church actively cooperated with the ACS in the colonial-missionary enterprise, particularly at its founding, and Churches within the Diocese of New Jersey continued to support the ACS (see Table 2) in parallel to their support for the Episcopal African Mission (though donations to the Episcopal African Mission giving eventually well outpaced ACS giving in the Diocese). 
            Essentially, the African Mission was viewed by White Episcopalians as a way of “giving back” to formerly enslaved Black people, while also removing them from the U.S., and simultaneously Christianizing Africa (a win-win-win in the racist imagination). This giving and attention paid to the African Mission also enabled churches in the Diocese to ignore the needs of their free and enslaved African-American neighbors, and little designated giving or program for domestic African-American ministries in the diocese developed until after the Civil War. Further, the governance structure of the African Mission for decades privileged the leadership and authority of White Americans (including the long-governing first Bishop of Liberia, John Payne). Thus the effect of African Mission giving in the diocese during this period was to siphon money and concern away from potential use in domestic African American ministry and toward a largely White-controlled foreign mission significantly aligned with the goal of the removal of African-Americans from the U.S. and the promotion of western cultural hegemony in Africa.
            During this period African Americans in the Diocese of New Jersey, almost without exception, continued to be consigned to marginal status, excluded from leadership, relegated to balconies and segregated seating, and, in general, treated as second-class citizens even when free (their baptisms and confirmations are often reported as if they were unusual events). The only significant Black ministries begun during this time (of otherwise absolutely exponential growth in the diocese)[11] were St. Philip’s (African) Church, Newark (admitted to the diocese in 1848),[12] the outreach ministry of Christ Church, Shrewsbury in the “African” settlement of Macedonia in Tinton Falls,[13] and a small handful of segregated parish schools including those at St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy,[14] St. Michael’s Church, Trenton,[15] Trinity Church, Princeton,[16] and Christ Church, Shrewsbury.[17] These schools were typically, though not always,[18] taught by White teachers, and oriented toward keeping Black students “in their place.” The funding for these domestic Black ministries constituted a vanishingly small percentage of church and diocesan budgets, certainly in no way approaching an amount commensurate with the proportional representation of African Americans in the general population at the time. African Mission giving among the White churches diverted (already meager) funds and concern away from domestic Black ministries and was part of a culture in the diocese at the time that prioritized maintenance of a status quo oriented around Black marginalization.
            
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
 

 

Table 1: Congregational Giving to the Africa Mission in the Diocese of New Jersey (through 1865)[19]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

1835, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:                    $2.50.

1835, St. Andrew’s Church, Mount Holly:                 $8.88.

1835, St. Mark’s Church, Orange:                              $5.00.

1835, St. James’ Church, Piscataway[20]:                 $0.09.

1835, Trinity Church, Woodbridge:                           $0.61.

1835, St. James Church, Knowlton:                           $1.07.

1836, St. Luke’s Church, Hope:                                  $0.62.

1840, Christ Church, Shrewsbury:                             $3.08.

1841, Christ Church, Shrewsbury:                             $5.13.

1842, Christ Church, Shrewsbury:                             $5.25.

1842, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown:                   $21.43.

1847, St. Paul’s Church, Hoboken:                              $10.00.

1851, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro:    $28.00.

1852, Christ Church, Shrewsbury[21]:                       $2.00.

1852, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro:    $22.00.

1853, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown:                    $1.32.

1853, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro:    $42.25.

1854, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro:    $37.23.

1854, St. Stephen’s Church, Mullica Hill:                   $9.27.

1855, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro:    $36.43.

1855, St. Stephen’s Church, Mullica Hill to:              $8.00.

1856, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley, at Clarksboro:   $46.61.

1856, St. Peter’s Church, Morristown[22]:                $5.00.

1856, Church of the Redeemer, Morristown[23]:    $???. 

1857, St. John’s Church, Salem[24]:                            $62.00. 

1857, St. Peter’s Ch., Berkeley at Clarksboro[25]:    $142.72.

1857, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverly:                          $75.00.

1857, Trinity Church, Hoboken[26]:                           $20.00.

1858, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley in Clarksboro:    $52.00.

1858, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverley:                       $75.00.

1858, Trinity Church, Hoboken[27]:                          $20.00.

1859, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:                    $120.00.

1859, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverly:                         $60.00.

1859, Grace Church, Jersey City:                               $2.00.

1860, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverly:                         $50.00.

1861, Trinity Church, Princeton:                                $66.54.

1861, Christ Church, Bordentown:                             $17.50.

1861, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverly:                          $40.00.

1862, St. Andrew’s Church, Mount Holly:                 $1.00.

1862, Christ Church, Allentown:                                $23.50.

1862, St. Stephen’s Church, Beverly:                         $30.00.

1863, Christ Church, Allentown:                                $37.00.

1863, Grace Church, Crosswicks:                              $4.00.

1863, St. Andrew’s Church, Mount Holly:                 $1.00.

1864, Christ Church, Allentown:                                $47.50.

1864, Grace Church, Crosswicks:                              $9.00.

1865, Grace Church, Crosswicks:                              $7.00.

Overall Total (1835-1865)[28] =                                  $1202.53

 

Table 2: Congregational Giving to the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the Diocese of New Jersey[29]

--------------------------------------------------------------

1834, Trinity Church, Newark:                      $17.43.

1834, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $14.00

1835, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $6.68

1836, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $7.50

1837, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $6.70

1838, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $6.30

1838, Christ Church, New Brunswick:          $7.00.

1839, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $7.00.

1840, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy[30]: $5.725.

1841, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:         $8.00.

1842, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy:        $15.00

1856, St. John’s Church, Somerville:             $49.00.

Overall Total:                                                   $150.335

 

---

[1] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Fifty Second Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey; Held in St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, on Wednesday the 27^th, and Thurday the 28^th Days of May, 1835 (Burlington, NJ: The Missionary Press, 1835), 12-27.

[2] George W. Doane, Episcopal Address Delivered at the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New-Jersey; May 28, 1834 (Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 33.

[3] For more on the history of the mission see D. Elwood Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), and James T. Yarsiah, The Episcopal Church – Early Missionaries in Liberia 1821-1871: Positive and Negative Impact of Missionary Activities (Saarbrucken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2014). For a rather hagiographic promotional account see The Protestant Episcopal Church, An Historical Sketch of the African Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. (New York: Foreign Committee, 1884).

[4] Even so, in 1835 dollars this is not a lot of dollars, and six out of thirty-two churches is only 18.75%.

[5] Gleaned from yearly convention journal reporting.

[6] There is no discrete financial accounting reported for this school in diocesan convention journal annual reports of the time.

[7] Cost to educate is not broken out, nor are the number of the “coloured” scholars listed by participating church. See 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.

[8] Though the total number of churches giving in any particular year (through the end of the civil war) never exceeded the initial six in 1835. See Table 1 for the record of giving.

[9] Bishop Doane’s elision of these ideas in his aforementioned address in 1834 is indicative. 

[10] See all of Ousmane K. Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2014).

[11] Doane’s tenure from 1832 to 1859 saw the number of churches in the diocese increase from 32 to 85, clergy from 18 to 98, and communicants from approximately 800 to 5000. See Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), 478.

[12] The long financial hardship of which is indicated, in part, by pleas from Doane for support. See, for example, The Rt. Rev. George Washington Doane, D.D., LL.D., Diocese of New Jersey: The Episcopal Address, to the Seventy-First Annual Convention, in Grace Church, Newark, Wednesday, May 31, 1854 (Burlington: Printed at the Gazette Office, 1854), 14.

[13] First mentioned in parochial annual reports to the diocese in 1854.

[14] First mentioned in parochial annual reports to the diocese in 1856.

[15] First mentioned in parochial annual reports to the diocese in 1860.

[16] A segregated school was run out of the church and supported by its leadership, though it appears that it may formally have been a separate project not reported in diocesan records. It seems it was intended to provide a school for Black children taught by White teachers as an alternative to the other segregated school in town run by local African-American leader Betsey Stockton. See Kyra N. Pruszinski and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski (ed.), “Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery: A Brief Introduction,” Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (April 10, 2023), https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html, last accessed October 10, 2023. 

[17] First mentioned in parochial annual reports to the diocese in 1854.

[18] The annual parochial report to the diocese in 1857 suggests that Christ Church, Shrewsbury had hired John N. Still, a “colored” teacher for their segregated “African” school of 112 students.

[19] As reported in diocesan convention journals (1835-1865).

[20] Nine cents is not a typo.

[21] Christ Church Shrewsbury reported jointly with Christ Church, Middletown and Trinity Chapel, Red Bank.

[22] Specifically designated for “Leacock Fund, Africa.”

[23] The annual report by Rev. J. H. Tyng states that the “interest of the Sunday school is devoted to the African Mission” but no specific financial numbers of any kind appear in his report.

[24] This giving is designated for “Foreign Miss.” and Africa is mentioned, but no specific dollar amount for funds dedicated to the African mission particularly are specified.

[25] Specifically designated for “Mrs. Thompson, Africa.” so in this unusual instance, the gift is designated specifically for a Black missionary.

[26] Specifically designated for “Grace Wright” scholarship in Africa.

[27] Again, designated for the “Grace Wright” scholarship in Africa.

[28] This table does not include general account Foreign Missions giving during this period, which, at least during the tenure of Bishop Payne (Liberia) went more to the Liberia Mission than any other mission. Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 96.

[29] As reported in diocesan convention journals (1834-1865).

[30] This donation does in fact include a half-penny.

VIDEO: NJISJ History of Segregation in New Jersey, Public Session #2 Recording

 

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has posted video from the second of nine public sessions sponsored by the New Jersey Reparations Council, held on December 4, 2023. The content deals with the history of segregation in New Jersey. Scholars and activists speaking included Dwayne Wharton, Jean-Pierre Brutus, Richard Smith, Dennis Parker, Maisha Simmons, Ryan Haygood, Khalil Gibran Muhammed, Jacob Faber, James Williams IV, Leticia Smith-Evans Haynes, and David Troutt. It is worth your time.

NEWS: Second Public Session of the History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee, 12/4/23 at 6:30pm

The History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council, convened by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ), will hold its second remote public meeting on Monday December 4, 2023 at 6:30pm, Eastern time. The Committee will share further details about its work and receive input from stakeholders and community members. This will be the second of nine planned sessions. The first was excellent and the second promises to be as well.

To watch only: Visit youtube.com/@dosocialjustice

 

To comment live during the event: Register at bit.ly/NJRCSession2 (link is case sensitive; copy and paste link into your browser). Commentary is limited to three minutes and should be related to the History of Slavery in New Jersey.

 

To submit longer commentary: You may write, submit audio or video, or another form of commentary to be considered by Committee members at bit.ly/NJRCPublicComment (link is case sensitive; copy and paste link into your browser).

 

If you are not able to attend live, a recording will be made available after the event on the NJISJ youtube channel: youtube.com/@dosocialjustice

REVIEW: The Anglican Church in New Jersey, by Nelson R. Burr (1954).

The Anglican Church in New Jersey. By Nelson R. Burr. Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954. pp. xvi-768. $10.00 (out of print).[1]

Nelson R. Burr, the celebrated church historian,[2] has written a history of the development of The Anglican Church in New Jersey. Burr’s text is the best known and most widely distributed book dealing with its subject, and while it does faithfully represent many aspects of the colonial correspondence of Anglican priests stationed in New Jersey, in general it does so uncritically. The effect of this authorial approach is that Burr has produced a credulous, often hagiographic, and frequently racist history that privileges the perspective of the privileged at the expense of marginalized peoples. It is a verbose testament to the power of survivor bias in the telling of church history and, while standing on the shelves of Episcopal church libraries throughout the state of New Jersey, it also stands as a warning to modern historiographers.

            Burr’s text does not purport to cover exhaustively the entire history of the Anglican (and later Episcopal) Church in New Jersey, but focuses most closely on the colonial era, prior to the formation of the Episcopal Church (hence the title).[3] In choosing this focus Burr relies overwhelmingly on a particular corpus of documentary evidence, that is, on the records of correspondence between New Jersey priests and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.), a voluntary Anglican association founded in 1701 to send priests to the colonies and, by extension, expand the reach and influence of the Church. Copies of this corpus are housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. and in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, while digital scans of the bulk of the holdings are now available for viewing online.[4] As a reference to the New Jersey-related portion of this catalog of correspondence, and as a starting point for investigating the primary documents themselves, Burr’s book is invaluable. It oscillates between summary paraphrase and fine-grained detail, at times approaching the tenor of an annotated bibliography, both highlighting many of the key themes of the correspondence and providing careful and specific reference to particular letters. However, if one is reading for narratological style, the structure of the text leaves something to be desired. Though the chapters move somewhat chronologically, they are clearly a product of a thematic collation of notes on the primary texts, presented in thematically designated chapters. The unfortunate result is that paraphrases of information drawn from the S.P.G. correspondence appear repeatedly across multiple chapters, almost without awareness of the fact that the author is repeating himself. Thus the book at times resembles a reference text more than a history, and seems structured based on the assumption that the reader will not be digesting the whole text cover-to-cover as printed.

            The more significant problem with Burr’s presentation of his source material is his apparent credulity regarding the institution of the Church as an agent of exclusive good. His narration maintains throughout a cadence of inevitability (and facile solidarity with the figures of the past), suggesting that pious Anglicans did right, others resisted, but that all things fell out essentially for good generally, and for the good of the Church particularly. In this he may be accurately representing the tone of the underlying sources, and the culture of the Church at the time of his writing,[5] but in doing so he reproduces institutional hagiography largely uncritically and rarely deploys a historiographic idiom that diverges in any appreciable way from survivor bias.

The clearest problem this bias creates for The Anglican Church in New Jersey appears in the Church’s treatment of the enslaved, and specifically enslaved Africans and African-Americans. Here Burr cleaves to the tone of his sources, which were written by priests who saw slavery as entirely justifiable within a “great chain of being,” while ignoring the actual data about slavery that the sources contain. Prolific enslavers, like Col. Lewis Morris and Col. Daniel Cox, who helped make draconian slave codes New Jersey law, are described in entirely glowing terms. Burr’s whitewash can perhaps best be seen in a subsection title which unironically asserts that “The Church Cherishes the Negro.” This brief section (pp. 224-228) paints a picture of benevolent concern and solicitude on the part of White Anglican priests. Almost without exception, the priests that he mentions as devoting attention to “the negroes” in this section in fact sought to create, buttress, and benefit from a slave society, while being active enslavers themselves. The letters Burr is working with, as he admits (p. 226), make frequent mention of the enslaved, but he is very selective in his presentation. Included in the New Jersey S.P.G. correspondence are plans for slave-worked plantations governed by priests,[6] reports of how Christianization is useful for suppressing slave revolt,[7] and mathematically challenged insistences that Anglicans are not significant enslavers.[8] But when Burr refers to these aspects of the correspondence, he justifies the enslavers, failing to indicate any appreciation for the crushingly oppressive injustice of the system the Church helped produce. Nor does he articulate precisely how enslavement constituted “cherishing.” 

Burr’s approach to the relation of enslaved Black people to the Church appears to be consistent with his convictions regarding race and the Church in general. In The Anglican Church in New Jersey he indicates his belief not just that the Anglican (and Episcopal) Church is essentially only for White people, but rather that it is only for a narrow subset of White people. This prejudice can be seen in his commentary on the demographic tables in his conclusion (e.g. Table IV, pp. 483-84) ostensibly explaining the obstacles to Episcopal Church growth in New Jersey presented by immigration from “southern and eastern Europe” (p. 468).

Burr’s text, though useful as a compendium of topically organized references to S.P.G. correspondence pertinent to New Jersey, is less a critical historiography, and more a starry-eyed, but deeply flawed hagiography of the Church. While clearly knowledgeable of the Church’s responsibility for slavery and racism from the testimony of the SPG letter archive, Burr manipulates his narrative to keep that knowledge from his readers with a dexterity that approaches prestidigitation.

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, M.Div., Ph.D.

Lecturer, Department of Religion, Princeton University

Reparations Commission Research Historian, Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

---

[1] Available through Hathi Trust at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001640884.

[2] For whom the annual Anglican and Episcopal History journal prize for best article is named.

[3] Though it does provide a cursory 69-page summary of the subsequent period through its publishing (1954).

[4] Courtesy of the British Online Archives, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) Correspondence Collection: “American in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1635-1928.” Manuscript copy scans at: https://microform.digital/boa/collections/11/america-in-records-from-colonial-missionaries-1635-1928.

[5] One review from the time it was published (William Warren Sweet, “The Anglican Church in New Jersey. By Nelson R. Burr,” Church History24.2 [1955]: 188-189) actually suggested that Burr has “refused to set the Church with its ministers and people upon a pedestal of perfection, and records the losses, failures and weaknesses as well as their courage and successes.”  The bar was set very low indeed to result in such an estimation. 

[6] T. Haliday to S.P.G. Secretary, 9 October 1717, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 12, pp. 301-7.

[7] J. Sharpe to S.P.G. Secretary, 23 June 1712, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 7, pp. 214-17.

[8] J. Holbrooke to S.P.G. Secretary, 17 November 1727, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 20, pp. 193-98.

NEWS: African Union and CARICOM Members Seek Reparations

Recent reporting has highlighted a joint effort by member nations of the African Union and member nations of the Caribbean organization CARICOM to hold European nations accountable for "historical mass crimes" related to slavery. A recent summit meeting in Accra, Ghana resulted in statements calling for formal apologies from European nations that were involved with enslavement and financial reparations to address the ongoing negative effects of the Atlantic slave trade. The delegates of the seventy-five nations representing the African Union and CARICOM were reportedly buoyed by recent announcements from the Church of England designating £100 million in reparations funding for its involvement in enslavement. The full Church of England report is available here. Some estimates suggest that the total owed by Britain alone to Caribbean nations for the effects of its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade could amount to over £18 trillion.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

The Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) - First American Bishop, New Jersey Enslaver

Samuel Seabury (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)

Today is the feast day for the Right Rev. Samuel Seabury, best known as the first consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He was elected bishop of Connecticut by ten clergy in 1783 and consecrated in Scotland in 1784. He was then formally elected by the Connecticut convocation in 1785. What is somewhat less well known is that he was an enslaver, and he became an enslaver during his time as a priest in New Jersey before the Revolutionary War. 
        The first parish Seabury served following his ordination was Christ Church, New Brunswick where he was rector from 1754 to 1757. After serving in New Jersey he held various appointments in New York State, and after the Revolutionary War, moved to Connecticut, where he had grown up and where his father had been a priest.
        His father had been an enslaver[1] when Seabury was growing up, so Seabury was likely already comfortable with the institution by the time he was an adult. But Seabury himself did not come to own any slaves until his marriage to Mary Hicks in his late-twenties, in 1756 while he was the rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey.[2] Many different priests and wealthy parishioners at Christ Church had owned slaves during the colonial era.[3] Hicks' family (also an enslaving family of origin like Seabury's) gave a dowry of one slave and a promise of more upon the marriage, than a number of additional enslaved persons subsequently. Throughout the rest of his career Seabury would remain an enslaver, still keeping enslaved persons until his death.[4]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

[1] Seabury's father's will lists ownership of an enslaved "mulatto" man named Newport. See New York Historical Society, Abstract of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, Vol. VI, 1760-1766 (New York: 1898), 347-348.
[2] See, for instance, Bruce Steiner, Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Oberlin: Ohio University Press, 1971), 65ff.

[3] See Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, ed. "The History of Slavery at Christ Church, New Brunswick," Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (March 27, 2023).

[4] Seabury's will lists two enslaved persons: Nell and Rose (see the scanned manuscript made available by the Connecticut State Library). The 1790 census data for New London County, Connecticut lists three enslaved persons in the household (Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, The First Census of the United States, 1790: Connecticut [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908], 129). For additional information see also "Samuel Seabury (1729-1796)" which is part of the "Trinity and Slavery" collection of the Primus Project hosted by Trinity College.

NEWS: Update on Diocese of NJ Racial Justice Review in Good News in the Garden State

Many thanks to Canon Steve Welch, the editor of Good News in the Garden State for publishing an update on the ongoing work of the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review! The article, entitled "Reparations Commission Researching History of Slavery and Racism in the Diocese" summarizes the findings and work to this point, explains how this is actually good news, and provides some possibilities for how congregations can engage in research and support of the initiative. Onward!

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey