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NOTES and DOCUMENTS the African Methodists of Philadelphia

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NOTES and DOCUMENTS the African Methodists of Philadelphia NOTES AND DOCUMENTS The African Methodists of Philadelphia, 1794-1802 The story of the exodus of the black Methodists from St. George's Church in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century and the subse- quent founding of Bethel African Methodist Church was first told by Richard Allen in a memoir written late in his life.1 Allen's story, fa- mous as a symbol of black independence in the Revolutionary era, il- lustrates the extent to which interracial dynamics characterized social life and popular religion in post-Revolutionary Philadelphia. The birth of Allen's congregation in the city was not an accident: Philadelphia's free black population had grown rapidly with the migration of ex-slaves attracted by Pennsylvania's anti-slavery laws and jobs afforded by the city's expanding commercial economy. The founding of the church also highlights the malleable character of American religion at this time; the ways religious groups became rallying points for the disenfranchised, the poor, and the upwardly mobile; and the speed and confidence with which Americans created and re-created ecclesiastical structures and enterprises. Despite the significance of this early black church, historians have not known the identities of the many black Philadelphians who became Methodists in the late eighteenth century, either those joining Allen's *I want to thank Richard Dunn, Gary Nash, and Jean Soderlund for their thoughtful comments, and Brian McCloskey, St. George's United Methodist Church, Philadelphia 1 Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev Rtchard Allen (Reprint edition, Nashville, TN, 1960) My description of the black community in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia is based on Gary B Nash, "Forging Freedom The Eman- cipation Experience in the Northern Seaport Cities, 1775-1820" in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom tn the Age of the American Revolution, Perspectives on the American Revolution (Charlottesville, VA, 1983), 3-48. 472 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS October church or those remaining at St. George's.2 The names of these African Methodists were in fact recorded in a register entitled "The Names of the Officers, and Members of the Methodist Church in Philadelphia," located among the records at the St. George's United Methodist Church at 4th and New Streets.3 The itinerant preachers stationed at local churches or societies (the terms were used interchangeably) kept the Methodist membership registers which were usually of two types. One gives the names of in- dividuals received on trial into a society, listed chronologically by date of admittance. The other type, usually taken down annually, records the "classes," or evangelical consciousness-raising groups into which Methodist societies were customarily divided. Probationers were as- signed to a class as soon as they entered the church, and the name of the leader, the layman or woman in charge of the group's weekly sessions, follows each name in a register of probationers, or heads each class list in a register of classes. Methodist membership records thus illuminate the divisions within individual churches as well as lines of authority among the laity. 2 Benjamin T Tanner, An Apology for African Methodtsm (Baltimore, 1867), Daniel A Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Churchy 2 pts (Nashville, TN, 1891), Charles H Wesley, Richard Allen Apostle of Freedom (Reprint edition, Washington, D C , 1969), George A Singleton, The Romance of African Methodism A Study of the African Methodist EpiscopalChurch (NewYork, 1952), Carol V R George, SegregatedSabbaths Richard Allen and the Emergence of the Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840 (New York, 1973), Milton C Sernett, Black Religion and American Evangelicalism White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity, 1187-1865, American Theological Library Association Monograph Series, No 7 (Metuchen, NJ, 1975), Harry V Richardson, Dark Salvation The Story of Methodism as It Developed Among Blacks in America, C Eric Lincoln Series on Black Religion (Garden City, NY, 1976), Clarence E Walker, A Rock m a Weary Land The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, LA and London, 1982), Julie Winch, "The Leaders of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1787-1848," PhD diss (Bryn Mawr College, 1982) George Singleton refers to the list of Bethel's members in his preface to the reprint of Allen's memoir, but does not reproduce or analyze it Allen, 6 3 The register covers the years 1793 to 1814, including both classes and admissions, and is recorded in the middle of a volume with "Births & Baptisms 1785 to 1816 St George's M E Church Philada" at one end, and "Marriages 17 89-1817 St George's M E Church Philada" at the other, located at the Historical Society of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, St George's United Methodist Church, 4th and New Streets, Philadelphia [hereafter cited as HSEPC] A microfilm copy is at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 1984 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 473 Reproduced here are the earliest surviving registers for the black classes at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, the class lists for Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as the lists of probationers admitted into Zoar, a black Methodist society under the charge of St. George's. St. George's lists were not dated, but they were written by itinerant Thomas Morrell, who was stationed in Philadel- phia from April 29, 1794, through April 21, 1795.4 Morrell almost certainly took down the names of Blair, Smith, and York's classes in the period from May to July 1794. John Burkib, a member of York's class, did not join St. George's until May 26; the next black members, ad- mitted on July 12 and 13, do not appear on the class lists, suggesting that Morrell had completed the record for the Philadelphia Society by this date.5 These records show that the classes at St. George's, like Methodist societies throughout the Middle Atlantic, were segregated by race. The registers are specifically identified as comprised of "black" members, distinct from the other eighteen white Methodist classes meeting in the city in 1794. Two were headed by white artisans, William Blair and Hugh Smith.6 What is notable is that the third class leader, Jonathan York, was a black laborer, resident in Southwark where many Afro- American immigrants settled in the 1780s and 1790s. Thus in the early stages of Methodism in America, a black man of relatively low social status held a position of importance.7 4 Thomas Morrell, "Journal," 1789-1809, typescript, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ For Morrell's stationing in Philadelphia, see Methodist Episcopal Church, The Mtnutes of the Methodtst Conferences, Annually Held tn America from 1773 to 1813, inclusive (New York, 1813) 5 The register for members received on trial begins with December 10, 1793 Thomas MorrelPs admissions begin on May 11, 1794 following the note "The above admitted by Freeborn Garritson The following by Thos Morrell " Black members whose names appear from January through September 1794 are Mary Holmes, Jane Vandergraff, Lydia Posey, Thomas Jonson, Benjamin Ellis, John Burkib, Jenny Gibbs, James Gibbs, Dinah Richardson, Betty Sampson, Henry Norton, and Peter Sampson 6 Smith was a house carpenter and Blair, a shoemaker The Philadelphia Directory, ed , Clement Biddle (Philadelphia, 1791), The Philadelphia Directory and Register, ed , James Hardie (Philadelphia, 1793) 7 Jonathan York's occupation and residence are listed in The Philadelphia Directory and Register and U S Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce and Labor, Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States Taken m the Year 1790 Pennsylvania (Reprint edition, Washington, D C , 1908) He is identified as a "Negroe" in the Philadelphia County Tax Assessment Ledger, Southwark (West) Ward, 1799, Philadelphia City Archives A full discussion of African Methodists forms part of my longer study, "Methodists and Early American Society The Shaping of Popular Religion in the Middle Atlantic, 1770-1800," to be submitted as a dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania 474 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS October In Philadelphia after the Revolution some blacks, like Richard Allen, also became prominent in the Afro-American community at large. Allen was born in the city in 1760 and spent most of his young adulthood working on a plantation in Delaware, where his master Benjamin Chew had sold Allen's family. He converted to Methodism when still a teenager and returned to Philadelphia in 17 86 after six years of traveling as a day laborer and informal preacher in Delaware, New Jersey, and Philadelphia's western hinterlands. He quickly developed the idea of organizing a separate congregation for the city's black population, suggested it to "the most respectable people of color," but their reception was lukewarm. As an alternative measure, Allen and a number of other black Philadelphians in 1787 founded a mutual aid society, called the Free African Society, to assist free blacks "without regard to religious tenets, provided, the persons lived an orderly, and sober life, in order to support one another in sickness, and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children." The group was reli- giously mixed and in addition to Allen included Methodists Absalom Jones, Dorus Jennings, and William White; Quaker Cyrus Bustill; and probably many black Anglicans.8 After the founding of the society a number of the black Methodists, the Free Africans prominent among them, left St. George's in a dispute over the segregation of seating within the chapel. At the beginning of a Sunday service following the construction of the church's galleries, the sexton directed Allen, Absalom Jones, William White, and other black members to sit in this new part of the building.
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