The Negro's church,.

4

The Negro's Church

a wooden church on the land of a Mr. Edmond Davis st
Yamacraw. He so impressed the people with his gospel messages that Negroes and whites helped him to raise sufficient
funds to purchase a lot upon which he erected a church. On
this spot, the first African Baptisf church of Savannah is
known to have stood for years. Bryan purchased his freedom
and continued his church work in and about Savannah.
In Virginia, between 1770 and 1800, many Negroes won
fame as forceful preachers. Among them were Gowan
Pamphlet, pastor of a Baptist church in Williamsburg; William Lemon, Who was chosen by a white congregation to
serve at the Pettsworth or Gloucester church; Josiah Bishop,
who preached to a mixed audience in Portsmouth as early as
1795 and who so impressed his congregation that they gave
him money with which to purchase his freedom; "Uncle
Jack," who preached from plantation to plantation in Virginia, doing it so effectively that white citizens raised a fund
with which they purchased his freedom; and in addition they
bought him a farm where for more than forty years he continued his ministry and converted many white people; Henry
Evans, a free Negro of Virginia, who preached so convincingly in Fayetteville, N. C., that the town council gave up its
opposition and allowed him to erect a Methodist church there
in 1790; and finally John Stewart, a free Negro of Virginia,
who went to Ohio and preached with so much power that he
organized white people into a church in Marietta, Ohio.
In 1780 Lemuel Haynes preached to whites in Connecticut,
Vermont, and Massachusetts. John Gloucester, a pioneer
Presbyterian preacher, attracted the attention of a Doctor
Blackburn of Tennessee, who was converted by the preaching
of this slave. Doctor Blackburn purchased Gloucester, encouraged him to study for the ministry and later granted him
his freedom.
Woodson, C. G., Ibid.