was forbidden by their masters to comply with the request.  Yet he reported the same year that among others he had in his congregation “about 30 Negroes and Indians,” most of whom joined “in the public service very decently."[47] At Newtown, where greater opposition was encountered, Rev. J. Beach seemed to have baptized by 1733 many Indians and a few Negroes.[48] The Rev. Dr. Cutler, a missionary at Boston, wrote to the Society in 1737 that among those he had admitted to his church were four Negro slaves.[49] Endeavoring to do more than to effect nominal conversions, Doctor Johnson, while at Stratford, had catechetical lectures during the summer months of 1751, attended by many Negroes and some Indians, as well as whites, “about 70 or 80 in all.”  And said he:  “As far as I can find, where the Dissenters have baptized 2, if not 3 or 4 Negroes or Indians, I have four or five communicants."[50] Dr. Macsparran conducted at Narragansett a class of 70 Indians and Negroes whom he frequently catechized and instructed before the regular service.[51] Rev. J. Honyman, of Newport, had in his congregation more than 100 Negroes who “constantly attended the Publick Worship."[52]

It appears then that the Negroes were instructed by the missionaries in all of the colonies except some remote parts of New England, Virginia and Maryland.  The Established Church had workers among the white persons in those colonies but they did not always direct their attention to the slaves.  This does not mean, however, that the slaves in those parts were entirely neglected.  There were at work other agencies to bring them to the light.  And so on it continued until the outbreak of the Revolution, when the work of these missionaries was impeded and in most cases brought to a close.

C. E. PIERRE

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] “An Account of the Endeavor Used by the S.P.G.,” pp. 6-12; Meade, “Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon,” pp. 31 et seq.

[2] Special Report of U. S. Commission of Ed., 1871, pp. 300 et seq.

[3] Journal, Vol.  I, May 30, July 18, and Aug. 15, 1707; Special Report of the U. S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 363.

[4] Pascoe, “Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” p. 15.

[5] Ibid., 15.

[6] In 1713 this churchman wrote his supporters: 

“As I am a minister of Christ and of the Church of England, and a Missionary of the most Christian Society in the whole world, I think it my indispensable and special duty to do all that in me lies to promote the conversion and salvation of the poor heathens here, and more especially of the Negro and Indian slaves in my own parish, which I hope I can truly say I have been sincerely and earnestly endeavoring ever since I was a minister here where there are many Negro