Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord The History of African-American Religions Copyright 2001 by Larry E. Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr. This work is li- censed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommer- cial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You are free to electronically copy, distribute, and transmit this work if you attribute authorship. However, all printing rights are reserved by the University Press of Florida (http://www.upf.com). Please contact UPF for information about how to obtain copies of the work for print distribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permis- sion from the University Press of Florida. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola The History of African-American Religions Edited by Stephen W. Angell and Anthony Pinn This series will further historical investigations into African religions in the Americas, encourage the development of new paradigms and methodologies, and explore cultural influences upon African-American religious institutions, in- cluding the roles of gender, race, leadership, regionalism, and folkways. aborers in the Vineyard of the Lord The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865–1895 Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr. University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers Copyright 2001 by Larry E. Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper All rights reserved 06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rivers, Larry E., 1950- Laborers in the vineyard of the Lord: the beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895 / Larry E. Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr. p. cm.—(The history of African-American religions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8130-1890-0 (alk. paper) 1. African Methodist Episcopal Church—Florida—History—19th century. 2. Florida—Church history—19th century. I. Brown, Canter. II. Title. III. Series. BX8444.F6 R58 2001 287'.8759—dc21 00-053658 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611–2079 http://www.upf.com For Betty Jean, Larry Omar, and Linje Eugene—my lilies of the valley L.R. With much love always, to Barbara C.B. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures ix Foreword xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction xv 1. Before Freedom 1 2. A Tumultuous Peace, 1865–1867 23 3. The Florida Annual Conference and Republican Rule, 1867–1869 43 4. Connections at Live Oak, 1869–1872 62 5. Acts of God and Man, 1872–1876 82 6. Redemption and the East Florida Conference, 1876–1880 101 7. Bishop Wayman’s Return, 1880–1884 122 8. Bishop Payne and the Democrats in Power, 1884–1888 142 9. A Healer Creates a College, 1888–1892 160 10. Tumult and Tragedy, 1892–1895 180 Notes 199 Bibliography 217 Index 229 This page intentionally left blank Figures 1. Map of Florida, showing principal towns and cities served by the AME Church in the period 1865 to 1895 5 2. Ossian Bingley Hart, governor of Florida 1873 to 1874 7 3. Pioneer Baptist minister James Page 9 4. Robert Meacham, founder of Tallahassee’s Bethel AME Church 14 5. Stella Meacham, wife of the Reverend Robert Meacham 15 6. Known as “Mother Midway,” the Midway AME Church located just west of Jacksonville 18 7. Bishop and Mrs. Daniel A. Payne 20 8. The Reverend William G. Stewart 25 9. The heartland of African Methodism in post–Civil War Florida 29 10. The Reverend Charles H. Pearce 31 11. Minister and shoemaker Joseph J. Sawyer 33 12. As illustrated by this early drawing, Apalachicola’s St. Paul’s AME Church 38 13. Drawing of the Monticello AME Church 40 14. The Reverend John R. Scott Sr. 44 15. Jacksonville’s Mount Zion AME Church 47 16. Bishop and Mrs. Alexander W. Wayman 49 17. One-time Florida slave Thomas Warren Long 53 18. Bishop and Mrs. John Mifflin Brown 60 19. Future AME bishop Josiah Haynes Armstrong 61 20. Presiding elder Charles H. Pearce 63 21. Poet, newspaper editor, legislator, and AME layman John Willis Menard 64 22. Jacksonville’s William W. Sampson 69 23. Tampa’s St. Paul AME Church 73 24. Carpenter and minister Francis B. Carolina 74 25. St. Paul AME Church, LaVilla, as it appeared in 1889 78 26. Bishop and Mrs. Thomas M. D. Ward 84 27. The Florida Senate in 1875 85 28. The Reverend Singleton H. Coleman 90 x Figures 29. Wilberforce University graduate Benjamin W. Roberts 94 30. Governor Marcellus Stearns greets Uncle Tom’s Cabin author, Harriet Beecher Stowe 97 31. AME minister, state official, federal official, and attorney Joseph E. Lee 105 32. Bishop Daniel A. Payne 107 33. Albert Julius Kershaw 111 34. William A. Bird 112 35. Bishop and Mrs. Jabez P. Campbell 114 36. Tallahassee’s Bethel AME Church 115 37. Tallahassee drawn in 1885 124 38. Robert Burns Brookins 127 39. The Reverend Reuben B. Brooks 129 40. The Reverend Bulley William Wiley 131 41. Key West’s Bethel AME Church during the 1880s 133 42. Pensacola’s tall-steepled Allen Chapel AME Church as it appeared in 1885 135 43. John R. Scott Jr. 139 44. Pensacola minister Morris Marcellus Moore 147 45. The Florida Normal and Divinity High School 151 46. Fernandina’s Macedonia AME Church 153 47. Palatka’s Bethel AME Church 157 48. St. Augustine’s newly constructed New St. Paul AME Church 158 49. Bishop and Mrs. Benjamin W. Arnett Sr. 161 50. The Reverend S. Timothy Tice 165 51. John H. Welch 169 52. Annie L. Welch 170 53. Benjamin W. Arnett Jr. 175 54. Edward Waters College’s board of trustees in 1892 176 55. Ocala’s brick Mt. Zion AME Church, erected in 1891 178 56. The Reverend John Walter Dukes 183 57. Bishop and Mrs. Abram Grant 186 58. The Reverend Caesar A. A. Taylor 188 59. The Edward Waters College faculty in 1892 191 60. Mary Alice LaRoche Certain 194 61. The Reverend W. D. Certain 195 Figures xi Foreword The History of African-American Religions series seeks to further histori- cal investigations into the varieties of African-American religions and to encourage the development of new and expanded paradigms, methodolo- gies, and themes for the study thereof. The editors of the series see this as an opportunity to expand our knowledge of African-American religious ex- pression and institutional developments to include underappreciated re- gions and forms. The work done by Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown Jr. provides an appropriate starting point. There is scarcely any period more important to African-American reli- gious history than the years examined in this book, the three decades after emancipation. One might well call it the period of Christian Reconstruc- tion; when considering African-American religion, historians do well to ex- tend the endpoint of this Reconstruction well past the premature demise of its political cousin in 1877. The AME bishops, writing in 1891 after a severe attack leveled on their southern ministers by Booker T. Washington, la- beled this a heroic period. As one reads this fine new work by Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown Jr., it is easy to see why. African Americans faced enormous problems in what was often called racial uplift: setting up viable congregations and functional church government, opposing white violence and discrimination, founding educational institutions, including women in all aspects of church life, figuring out how to maximize their political influence in rapidly changing times. Any one of these tasks would have been an enormous challenge in itself, but the AME churches in Florida, as well as Rivers and Brown as their historians, were obliged to tackle all these issues. Rivers and Brown provide invaluable insight into these important dimen- sions of African-American church life in their work. All the church’s experi- ences of close cooperation and inner conflict, advances and setbacks, suc- cesses and failures are candidly yet sensitively discussed within these pages. This work exemplifies a noteworthy trend in studies of American reli- gious history to place an increasingly close focus on events at the state and local level. As Rivers and Brown point out, there are some scholarly studies that have examined African-American religious development during Re- xii Foreword construction throughout the South. But, until now, the state of Florida has escaped close scrutiny in this regard. Thus Rivers and Brown provide future historians of this period with a crucial building block. Students of this era of African-American religious history stand to gain substantially by knowing in detail what went on in states like Florida, and it is this illuminating detail that Rivers and Brown deliver.