especially in New York City and Philadelphia, where separate black Anglican/Episcopal churches were formed after 1790. Black people who had been baptized and instructed in catechism classes could take communion in Anglican churches. Thomas Thompson, SPG missionary to Monmouth County, New Jersey, from 1745 to 1750, described ministering to black people: “I catechized them in the Church on certain Sundays, and sometimes at Home: and after due Instruction, those whom I had good Assurances of I received to Baptism, and such as afterwards behaved well I admitted to the Communion.” In attendance at services, through the sacraments, and in catechism classes, blacks and Indians became a significant minority in the Church of England.70
Trinity Church in New York City was a model of the ways that Anglicans in northern colonies sought to minister to black people through education and sacraments, and hundreds of black people were baptized at this parish. Reverend Elias Neau began work in 1704 as a catechist, and he held school sessions that included enslaved blacks, free blacks, and a small number of Indians.71 In 1726, Trinity Church sent a letter to the SPG requesting a new catechist to minister to blacks and Indians. Since “about One Thousand and four hundred Indian and Negro Slaves” were in New York, they wrote, the need for a catechist was great. “A Considerable number of those Negroes by the Society’s charity have been already instructed in the principles of Christianity, have received Holy Baptism, are Communicants of our Church and frequently Approach the Altars,” but many more needed instruction.72 Reverend Richard Charleton operated Trinity Church’s school for blacks from 1733 to 1747, and from his school, fifteen to twenty black people were baptized annually. According to missionary reports, approximately 24 black adults and 195 black children were baptized at Trinity Church between 1732 and 1740.73 Sermons and letters from members of the SPG attest to a widely held desire, especially among Anglican clergymen, to baptize blacks and Indians.
Church of England clergymen, like almost all colonial clergy, claimed that baptism did not alter the bondage of enslaved blacks. Reverend George Berkeley, while in Newport, Rhode Island, in October 1729, preached a sermon on baptism, arguing that “Our Saviour commandeth his disciples to go & baptize all nations,” and he specifically stated that this included baptizing enslaved black people. He also insisted that children and slaves should be baptized under the authority of the head of Christian households, and that “Christianity maketh no alteration in civil rights,” that is, in the right to own slaves. New York’s legislature in 1706, at the request of Anglican missionaries, passed “An Act to Encourage the Baptizing of Negro, Indian and Mulatto Slaves.” It decreed “That the Baptizing of any Negro, Indian or Mulatto Slave shall not be any Cause of reason for the setting them or any of them at Liberty.” Since the 1660s, English colonists had to keep insisting that baptism did not free slaves because the “heathenism” of Africans was an early justification for their enslavement and because enslaved people kept trying to use Christianity to obtain freedom.74
By meeting with slaves directly and by encouraging masters to promote religion among their slaves, Anglican clergy successfully laid the foundation for interracial church life in northern colonies, but little information about individual black Anglicans has survived in archives. Although autobiographical accounts by black and Indian Anglicans are scarce, some telling demographic characteristics can be extracted from church records. Many blacks and Indians were baptized as adults, and there was a roughly equal balance between men and women. At Christ Church Philadelphia, at least seventy-eight people were clearly identified as blacks in the baptismal records between 1730 and 1749. One of these people was “Pompsey, an adult negro slave belonging to ye minister of ye parish.” Additionally, at least two Indians were baptized in 1733: “John, Son of Peter & Margret Moutanne, an Indian,” and “Anne daughter of Amoritta, Mr. Lawrence’s Indian woman.” Of the black people baptized, forty-two were male and thirty-six were female. These people appear to have been, moreover, equally divided between adults and children/infants. The high proportion of adult baptisms contrasts sharply with the typical trend among whites. English Anglicans were much more likely to have been baptized as children. Many of these black people were forcibly abducted and carried across the Atlantic as slaves, so they did not necessarily learn about Christianity from their parents. In fact, many enslaved Africans practiced Islam or other West African religions. Enslaved adults, as well as children, were targets of the Church of England’s outreach.75
In most cases, black people who were baptized in the Church of England parishes were identified by their race, status, and master’s name. Identifying black men, women, and children in this manner meant that their legal status as slaves and perceived racial identity was reinforced at the very same time white society recognized them as Christians. There were, however, some exceptions to this pattern. In a few cases, the enslaved parents were listed for a child’s baptism with or without the owner’s name. For example, “Salisbury, son of Richard & Dinah slaves of Griffith,” was baptized in 1748 at Christ Church Philadelphia. Although black families under slavery always faced the possibility of being separated, black family relationships were, to an extent, acknowledged by churches. The white ministers implied that parents, as well as the masters, had a responsibility to raise the enslaved children in the Christian faith.76
In addition to the parishes located in cities and coastal areas, Anglican priests also ministered to Indians, Africans, and colonists on the outskirts of Britain’s North American empire at missionary chapels. Reverend Henry Barclay recorded nearly three hundred baptisms at Queen Anne Chapel located at Fort Hunter, New York, between 1735 and 1746. Fort Hunter marked the border between English settlements west of Albany and Mohawk territory. In the setting of a military and commercial outpost, Barclay ministered to and taught Indians (he could speak some Mohawk) until he left in 1745 to become rector of Trinity Church New York. Not only was this a place of interracial trade and diplomacy, but it was also a site of interracial religious exercises, supported by the SPG.77 Although the racial notations in these records appear haphazard and inconsistent, at least four “negroes” were baptized at Queen Anne Chapel, all slaves of John Wemp or Captain Hellen. Some of the Indians baptized there were identified as Oneida, Tuscarora, or simply as Indian. Although English and Dutch last names predominate in the records, there are dozens of Indian last names recorded.78 These families and baptized individuals of different ethnicities likely worshipped and occasionally took communion together. Even at the edges of the empire, or perhaps especially at the edges of the empire where different cultures collided and where shared rituals facilitated trade and politics, religion often occurred in interracial contexts.
Some Lutheran and Moravian churches in the Mid-Atlantic also ministered to blacks or Indians between 1730 and 1749, but fewer blacks and Indians affiliated with these churches than with Anglican and Congregational ones. Lutheran and Moravian churches, most of which were ethnically German, were relatively young transplants from Europe, and there were fewer black people in German American communities. Nevertheless, their participation in some of these other denominations suggests that early African American and Indian forms of Christianity were not limited to one or two types of churches and were not limited to the churches that promoted the Great Awakening revivalism.79
During the 1730s, German Lutheran churches in Pennsylvania were struggling to become well established, but blacks occasionally participated in Lutheran churches. German and Swiss migrants were growing in numbers and were spreading out from Philadelphia in the first decades of the eighteenth century, but there were few ordained clergy among them. From 1733 until 1742, there was only one ordained German Lutheran minister, Casper Stoever, in Pennsylvania. In these nine years, Stoever baptized at least 1,418 people, some of whom were identified as English rather than as German congregants. The first German Lutheran church in Pennsylvania was organized in 1717, but dozens were planted across Pennsylvania by the 1740s.80
The circumstances of German colonists and their churches did not make them natural centers of interracial religious experiences. Given the early years of German congregations in Pennsylvania and the immigrant status of most Germans, their Lutheran churches baptized few blacks or Indians during the 1730s and 1740s. Most of the recently arrived German and Swiss immigrants lacked the money to purchase slaves. Some of the German migrants were themselves bound to years of service as payment for the cost of transportation to
