Black History

The Early African Americans of St. Bartholomew’s Church

Our African Heritage

In the nineteenth century, when St. Bartholomew’s Parish was founded, both the nature of the economy in northern Montgomery County and the origin of the people who lived and worked there were quite different from what they are today. The First, or Cracklin, District of Montgomery County, near the center of which St. Bartholomew’s Church was situated, was an agricultural region with a population that lived mainly in the countryside. About four of every ten residents in the district could trace their ancestry to Africa, from whence they or their forebears had been brought to America involuntarily to labor for owners of European background who held them as property under Maryland law. Only about one in four of these Africans and their descendants gained their liberty before the Civil War.

The 1850 census showed a population in the district that was 59 percent white, 30 percent enslaved, and 11 percent free persons of color. The 863 slaves in the district were, or in the case of infants would become, the laborers of the 156 white individuals who owned them. Thus the district had an average of 5.5 enslaved per owner. The members of St. Bartholomew’s vestry in 1850 held larger than average groups in bondage. All but one of them had between 8 and 14 bondsmen. The wealthy and politically prominent vestryman Allen Bowie Davis stood out by holding a total of 27 enslaved black and mulatto workers in the district. The productive and creative capacity of these bondsmen was highly regarded.

Thomas Allen, the Baptizer

Some ministers in the Anglican Church had taken a serious interest in the spiritual lives of Marylanders of African origin in the colonial period, and the Episcopal Church expanded this concern after independence. The first rector of St. Bartholomew’s to baptize black residents of the parish seems to have been the Rev. Thomas G. Allen, who came to the parish in 1820, just seven years after its organization. Allen was a careful record-keeper, and he inscribed the names of eighty black children in the parish’s baptismal register
Thomas Allen had been born in Hudson, New York, in 1794, and he turned 26 in the year he came to officiate at St. Bartholomew’s Church. His older brother Benjamin had been studying for the Presbyterian ministry in 1814 when the newly elected Episcopal bishop of Virginia, Richard Channing Moore, who was also a New Yorker, invited the two young men to come to Virginia and become candidates for the Episcopal ministry there. Both accepted the invitation and were soon ordained. Benjamin would die in 1829 after becoming rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

Writing his brother’s biography, Thomas Allen quoted a letter Benjamin had sent him from Virginia describing his ministerial work among the enslaved blacks in his parishes near Charles Town and Shepherdstown. “I am very much engaged preaching to the poor blacks. I go from plantation to plantation, and preach to them in the morning after breakfast or after dark, under the eye and guidance of their masters. They promise good effects from it already. Many true Christians have I found among them. . . . I know you will be zealous and active, and I trust, you will not neglect the poor slaves.” The substantial number of enslaved African Americans Thomas baptized suggests that he fully agreed with his brother’s statements about the importance of evangelizing among African Americans.
Thomas Allen left St. Bartholomew’s Church in 1828 and moved to Philadelphia to become director of missions and interim minister for his brother, who soon left on a trip to England. After Benjamin succumbed to a pulmonary illness on the return voyage, Thomas became a missionary to Philadelphia’s poor, hospitalized, and imprisoned, a calling to which he would devote his energies for more than thirty years. In 1856, when the new Republican Party entered the national political scene, Thomas Allen took a public stand in favor of the party’s antislavery presidential candidate and vehemently opposed the spread of slavery to new territories in the West. Evidently, his concern for African Americans long survived his service to St. Bartholomew’s Parish.

The Ministries of Levin Gilliss and Orlando Hutton

The Revs. Levin Gilliss and Orlando Hutton served successively as rectors of St. Bartholomew’s Parish from 1829 to 1844 and 1844 to 1866, and both continued Allen’s practice of baptizing enslaved African Americans. Neither of the men were as faithful as Allen had been at recording their baptisms in the parish register, however, so the identities of most of those they baptized is unknown. Gilliss recorded the baptism of eight African Americans in 1831 and 1832 before ceasing to inscribe the names of those to whom he administered the sacrament, except for one white individual whom he baptized in 1842. Hutton never entered in the parish register the names of the individuals he baptized.

Both ministers, however, reported the number of baptisms they performed in their annual parochial reports. While a few of these reports are also missing, we know from the many that were published in the diocesan convention journals that over 180 additional baptisms were performed in the parish between 1833 and 1866. Five of Hutton’s parochial reports specified the race of the infants he baptized, and in those years his figures showed that he baptized 24 whites and 21 African Americans. If similar proportions held during the years for which no breakdown was given, a total of some 80 to 90 of the 182 recipients of the sacrament of baptism in these years would have been African American.

Recalling near the end of his life conditions in the antebellum Episcopal Church in Maryland, Hutton observed that blacks were assigned separate seating in these churches, either in the gallery or near the doors, and invited to attend, but that most did not or could not respond. Episcopal masters very largely treated their servants well, Hutton wrote, but they only made religious instruction available to those who worked in the household, and regrettably did not enable ministers to instruct those who did agricultural work. Infant baptism may have been a rare religious ritual offered to these workers.

Participation in a New Time of Freedom

After emancipation, many African Americans worshipped in separate congregations they formed. Some, however, continued to worship at St. Bartholomew’s, as evidenced by the dozen blacks baptized there by Rev. William Laird between 1877 and 1892, the ten African American couples married in the church in the same period, and the black youth baptized in her parents’ home by Rev. Henry Marsden in 1913. Several substantial black families seem to have belonged to the parish in the late nineteenth century. Laird baptized four children of Remus Walker, a farm laborer who lived near Brookeville, and his wife Helen between 1879 and 1883, and he presided at the marriage of Thomas Walker in 1882. The rector also baptized three black members of the Gittings family at a single service in 1879. Census records indicate that Martha Simpson, the mother of Henrietta Simpson, the last black child Laird baptized, was the resident cook for the family of Laytonsville merchant, George W. Mobley.
As American industry came to offer better opportunities to black workers than did the farms of Montgomery County, many African Americans migrated to urban areas. We have not been able to trace the lives of the individual African Americans baptized in St. Bartholomew’s Parish, and we do not know whether they maintained a connection to the Episcopal Church. While we can only hope that the spiritual seeds planted at St. Bartholomew’s bore fruit in their lives, we can be confident that the true worth of these hard-working individuals will reap the ultimate reward of God’s blessing.

The African Americans Listed in
the Original Register of Baptisms at
St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church

Name	Relation	Baptism		Date
Elizabeth	daughter of Susan BaDate	August	6	,1820
Rachel Ann	daughter of Fanny	August	6	,1820
Reuben Matthews		August	6	,1820
Mary Ann Matthews		August	6	,1820
Jane	daughter of Flora	August	6	,1820
Mary Jane	daughter of Arche and Lettice	August	6	,1820
Caroline Swirles	daughter of Holmer	August	6	,1820
John Richard	son of Hannah	August	21	,1820
Benjamin	son of Fanny	September	3	,1820
George Washington	son of Hagar	September	3	,1820
Sally	daughter of Milly	September	17	,1820
Kitty Ann	daughter of Priscilla	September	17	,1820
Henry	son of Milly	September	17	,1820
Simon	a boy of four and a half	December	29	,1820
Samuel	son of Kitty	April	25	,1821
Otho	son of Peggy	July	23	,1821
Isaac	son of Milly	July	23	,1821
Edward	son of Nelly	July	23	,1821
Ann Maria	daughter of Phillis	August	19	,1821
Levi	son of Rachel	December	24	,1821
Kitty Cooke	daughter of Fanny	June	23	,1822
Richard Campbell	son of Rachel	June	23	,1822
Rachel Matilda Mitchell	daughter of Lettice	June	23	,1822
William Henry	son of Harriet	July	7	,1822
Abraham Jackson	son of Perry	August	18	,1822
Isaac	son of Matilda	August	18	,1822
Jacob	son of Cloe	August	18	,1822
Martha Ann Bowie		August	18	,1822
Alfred	son of Milly	September	15	,1822
John Wesley	son of Jenny	October	28	,1822
Allen	son of Mary	November	10	,1822
Harriet	daughter of Rachel	March	16	,1823
Kitty	daughter of Harriet	May	11	,1823
John Philemon	son of Sophey	June	8	,1823
Mary Green	daughter of Charlotte	June	8	,1823
Phil Key	son of Charity	June	22	,1823
George Washington	son of Lucy	June	22	,1823
Caroline	daughter of Fanny	July	20	,1823
Emely	daughter of Mary Ann	September	14	,1823
George	son of Rachel	November	9	,1823
Sarah	daughter of Linny	April	25	,1824
Robert Henry	son of Priscilla	July	4	,1824
William Henry Evins		August	1	,1824
Basil	son of Milly	August	1	,1824
John Wesley Johnson		August	1	,1824
Artimus Johnson		August	1	,1824
Eliza Ann Clemans		August	1	,1824
Mary Ann	daughter of Charlotte	August	1	,1824
Orsey	son of Matilda	August	1	,1824
Charlotte Ellen	daughter of Rachel	September	26	,1824
Elizabeth Eliza	daughter of Cloe	October	10	,1824
Marion	daughter of Hagar	October	24	,1824
John Wesley	son of Rachel	December	19	,1824
John Wesley	son of Milly	December	27	,1824
Punch Cola	son of Elizabeth	May	8	,1825
Lucy Ann Thomas		June	5	,1825
Ana Maria Thomas		June	5	,1825
William Hamilton	son of Susanna	June	19	,1825
George Anna	daughter of Harriet	June	19	,1825
Alexander	son of Matilda	July	17	,1825
George Washington	son of Priscilla	August	14	,1825
Emily	daughter of Margaret Ann	October	9	,1825
Louisa	daughter of Hannah	October	23	,1825
Eliza	daughter of Rachel	November	20	,1825
George	son of Jinny	January	15	,1826
Rosetta	daughter of Charlotte	February	22	,1826
Eveline	daughter of Linney	March	26	,1826
William Henry	son of Milly	July	16	,1826
George Washington	son of Milly	July	16	,1826
Horace	son of Celey	October	8	,1826
Charlotte	daughter of Charity	July	15	,1827
Mary Ellen	daughter of Priscilla	July	15	,1827
Columbus	son of Hagar	July	29	,1827
Isaac	son of Fanny	July	29	,1827
John	son of Milly	August	12	,1827
Fanny	daughter of Sucky	August	12	,1827
Sam	son of Sucky	August	12	,1827
William Washington		October	7	,1827
Hamilton Slater		December	4	,1827
Mary Jane	daughter of Eliza	February	10	,1828
Eliza	daughter of Milly	July	11	,1831
Hesse Ann	daughter of Charity	October	16	,1831
Horace Willson	son of Lucy	October	16	,1831
Sarah Ann	daughter of Chartoot	May	27	,1832
Otho William	son of Ann	May	27	,1832
Albert Jefferson	son of Rachael	June	10	,1832
Harriet Ann	daughter of Mary	June	10	,1832
Ariana Smith	daughter of Harriet	June	24	,1832
Franklin Henderson Gittings		August	29	,1878
William Henry Gittings		August	29	,1878
Mary Eliza Gittings		August	29	,1878
Alice Lavenia Walker		April	27	,1879
James Alfred Walker		April	27	,1879
John Edward Williams		April	12	,1880
William Henry Knox		March	23	,1881
Amelia Ann Walker		April	24	,1881
Maggie Lee Ella Walker		January	4	,1883
Louis Dudey Locke		September	13	,1883
John Jefferson Johnson		November	25	,1884
Henrietta Simpson		February	21	,1890
Agnes Marie Tyler				1913