“Reed through the Bybell”: Slave Education in Early Virginia

Antonio T. Bly

Book History, Volume 16, 2013, pp. 1-33 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/bh.2013.0014

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 “Reed through the Bybell”
!
Slave Education in Early Virginia

Antonio T. Bly

“The Chilldann of Issarall”: An Introduction

August 4, 1723, weeks after the Church of England appointed Edmund
Gibson the bishop of London, a group of anonymous slaves in the Virginia
colony wrote the chaplain (Figures 1–3). Judging from their letter, Gibson’s
commission inspired the slaves to write.1 News of his appointment probably
filled the streets in tidewater Virginia. By word of mouth, reports about
the bishop could have made their way into the Piedmont, farther westward
into the Appalachian Mountains and into the sparsely populated south and
eastern shore countrysides. News of the bishop’s appointment could also
be heard echoing about the tabby plastered walls of the local parish, where
clerks and sextons talked and where parsons were sure to keep their congre-
gations, which included slaves, apprised.
However they may have learned of Gibson’s appointment, the anony-
mous slaves demanded relief. Written in their best hand,2 they entreated the
service of the “Lord arch Bishop of Lonnd.” They also beseeched “Lord
King George” for assistance. By their own account, they were misused by
their colonial masters, much like “the Egyptians was with the Chilldann
of Issarall.” Virginia slave owners, they went on to report, “doo Look no
more up on us then if wee ware dogs which I hope when these Strange
Lines comes to your Lord Ships hands will be Looket in to.” At once bold
and deferential, they asked for immediate intervention. “Releese us,” they
demanded, from “this Cruell Bondage.”3
Most striking, the anonymous slaves also demanded education. “Wee
. . . do humblly beg the favour of your Lord Ship,” they explained, “. . .
[to] Settell one thing upon us which is . . . that our childarn may be broatt
up in the way of the Christian faith.” In their minds, that meant teaching
them “the Lords prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments,” the ba-
sic texts by which children were first introduced to the Anglican faith. But
that was not sufficient for the bishop’s correspondents. They also implored
2 Book History

Figure 1 Page 1 - Anonymous Slave Petition to the Bishop of London, Fulham

Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 9, Volume 17:
167.
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 3

Figure 2 Pages 2 - Anonymous Slave Petition to the Bishop of London, Fulham

Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 9, Volume 17:
168.
4 Book History

Figure 3 Page 3 - Anonymous Slave Petition to the Bishop of London, Fulham

Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 9, Volume 17:
168.
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 5

the church official to put their slave children “to Scool and Larnd to Reed
through the Bybell.”4
Since Thomas Ingersoll’s discovery of this passionate plea by Virginia
slaves in the bishop of London’s papers, historians have offered little in the
way of context with respect to the letter specifically and the subject of slave
education/literacy during the early colonial era in general. Except for John
C. Van Horne’s account of the Bray schools in British North America, Terry
Meyer’s recent history of the Bray school in eighteenth-century Williams-
burg, E. Jennifer Monaghan’s recent study of reading and writing in colonial
America, Janet D. Cornelius’s and Heather Andrea Williams’s monographs
on slave literacy in the antebellum era, and John K. Nelson’s and Joan R.
Gundersen’s works on the Anglican Church in Virginia, the subject of slaves
achieving literacy and letters, particularly so in the early period, has gar-
nered modest attention.5 In other words, although Van Horne’s, Meyer’s,
and Monaghan’s studies have given us useful histories of the Bray schools
and of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels in Foreign Parts, none
address the other work with slaves done by the Church of England in the
colonies during the early period. In a similar vein, Nelson’s and Gundersen’s
works make little use of the church’s efforts with slaves prior to 1740, which
marked the establishment of a more stable clergy in the colony. An analysis
of extant vestry records, however, and of the correspondence between the
bishop of the London and Virginia parsons, reveals a complex narrative
that not only provides the missing context of the anonymous 1723 letter but
also demonstrates an overlooked aspect of the colony’s history, the African
American literacy tradition.6
The African American literacy tradition is a complex history(s) in which
enslaved African Americans achieved literacy but not necessarily a body
of letters, writing but not automatically penmanship, marks as opposed to
unambiguous signatures. Unlike the belletristic tradition in which numerous
African and African American authors lay claim to the mantel of history and
humanity by writing themselves into existence, the unheralded efforts of the
anonymous group of slaves who wrote the bishop signify much more. While
Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and others clearly made the Western
book talk back through their mastery of the pen and likewise penmanship,
their stories represent but the tip of an otherwise large edifice of which the
African American literacy tradition forms the base.7 In the stories of those
unlettered slaves lies the very foundation upon which much of eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century slave culture rests. While the enslaved Virginians
who wrote the bishop of London and the king achieved literacy, their letter
6 Book History

also registered a different understanding of the Bible, an understanding that

would inform their children and their children’s folkways, songs, and be-
liefs. That rich and nuanced story, a story wherein enslaved Afro-Virginians
imagined themselves modern-day Israelites or, as they put it, “the Chilldann
of Issarall,” without the benefit of a published poem or a self-styled book,
is the subject of this article.8

“Wee darer nott Subscribe”: The Problem of Slaves

Writing in Early Virginia
As early as the 1720s, slaves in the Chesapeake were clearly learning to read.
By E. Jennifer Monaghan’s account, such instruction had become common-
place. That is to say, regardless of race, enslaved persons could be taught
reading but not writing because writing fell within the purview of property-
owning white men. Apparently, enslaved African Americans did not share
the sentiments of their masters in that regard. Far from it; after learning how
to read, some began putting those lessons to good use by teaching them-
selves how to write. As my recent study of runaways and literacy in early
America demonstrates, enslaved Virginians between the 1730s and 1760s,
if not earlier, used what lessons they learned in reading as a way toward
mastering writing and perhaps even penmanship. Either way, in those bold
acts of learning how to write themselves free, they broke with the prevailing
social customs of the day that held fast the belief that colonials of African
descent were a people devoid of print and letters.9
Blatantly, they also broke the law. For many of the slave-owning elite,
slaves writing jeopardized their authority. Not long after codifying race and
slavery as one and the same thing, the general assembly of the tobacco col-
ony (largely property-owning white males) made that much plain in 1680
when they declared it unlawful “for any negro . . . to goe or depart from his
master’s ground without a certificate.”10 Simply put, no slave could leave his
or her master’s house or plantation without a ticket or pass. Without such
consent, an apprehended slave received “twenty lashes on the bare back
well layd on, and soe sent home to his said master, mistris or overseer.” Over
time, slaves without a pass were taken up and held as fugitives. If taken up a
second time without a “certificate,” a slave could suffer dismemberment or
even death. Writing, therefore, stood for the planter’s power and the slave’s
confinement; the absence of it carried heavy burdens.11 Consequently, when
the anonymous group of Virginian slaves composed their missive to the
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 7

bishop of London, they knowingly trespassed both tradition and the au-
thority of their owners, or, as they observed: “Wee darer nott Subscribe any
mans name to this for feare of our masters for if they knew that wee have
Sent home to your honour wee Should goo neare to Swing upon the gallas
tree.”12
And swung they surely would have had they subscribed their names and
been discovered. Indeed, by signing, the slave authors of the anonymous
letter would have registered in print an ugly, distasteful, unthinkable fact—
that unspeakable thing being that they, too, belonged to the human race.
They, too, held within their breast the same natural rights their masters
claimed for themselves. Perhaps most important, although they were sable
sons and daughters of Christ, they, too, inherited the promise of Christen-
dom and therefore both spiritual and earthly freedom. In all likelihood, that
probably explains why early on in their efforts to deny their black bondser-
vants freedom and access to the ability to read and write, slave owners used
their influence to pass legislation that declared that neither conversion nor
baptism altered “the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom;
that diverse masters, freed from this doubt may more carefully endeavor the
propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or chose
of greater growth if capable, to be admitted to that sacrament.”13
Denying slaves the full promise of Christianity represented but one of a
series of regulations slave owners used to deprive their prized possessions
of their very personhood. Africans, they had reasoned, had no letters and
therefore no culture. They were a conquered, malleable people rooted in
the oral traditions of their mysterious, pagan native lands. By comparison,
in the Western tradition, literacy signified culture and civilization. Writing,
especially in the form of penmanship, represented what Konstantin Dierks
called a great “epistolary divide,” an imaginary line that separated man
from the beast, brute from the savage, upper class from the lower sort.14
In this setting, writing represented one thing, signing perhaps something
much more. Signing their names was simply not a wise course of action. Af-
ter all, there was little to gain by signing, as such an expression would only
warrant death or perhaps even worse. Hence, although denying them their
full birthright, their humanity, anonymity nonetheless offered the enslaved
Virginian writers an artful sword and shield.
8 Book History

“Strange Lines . . . [in his] Lord Ships hands”:

Edmund Gibson, Virginian Parsons, and Slaves
Reading and Writing, ca. 1724—1730
Despite their fears, which were considerable, the anonymous slaves stole
away, perhaps at night, with paper, ink, and a quill, and wrote the newly
appointed bishop of London, who receptively received their passionate plea
for help. (By the way, slaves acquiring stationery represented no small feat,
considering that such writing materials were not readily available to most
colonials until after 1740.15) Written less than a few months later, Edmund
Gibson’s correspondence with Virginia’s parsons offers us not only a con-
text to better understand the slaves’ anonymous letter but also perhaps a
useful account of slave education in the early period of the colony’s history.
Gibson, according to biographer Norman Sykes, was a more than able
diplomat, keenly adept in ecclesiastical matters and in the politics of his day
and of his office.16 A member of the Virginia Company, he worked tirelessly
to build a strong clergy in the colonies, enlarge the power of his office, and
expand the authority of his representatives (commissaries) overseas. Gibson
was also an earnest Protestant committed to the project of baptizing and
instructing slaves and Native Americans. “During the long indisposition of
Archbishop Wake, he took the Primate’s place at the head of the Society
of the Propagation of the Gospel” (SPG), a biblical literacy society started
by the Reverend Dr. Thomas Bray. Both in England and abroad, he wrote
public appeals to support the SPG in its mission to teach slaves and Native
Americans Christianity by way of reading.17
The bishop’s missionary zeal in that regard was not an unusual thing.
Quite the contrary, precedents for such fervor can be traced back to the sev-
enteenth-century works of John Locke and Morgan Godwyn, both of whom
advocated education for the less fortunate. Shortly after “being call’d by the
Providence of God to the Government and Administration of the Diocese
of London, by which the Care of the Churches in the Foreign Plantations
is also devolv’d upon” him, Gibson thought it his “Duty to use all proper
means of attaining a competent Knowledge of the Places, Persons, and Mat-
ters, entrusted to [his] Care.” So that he could obtain “a right knowledge
of the State and Condition of” the churches overseas, the newly charged
bishop drew up a “Paper of Enquiries,” employed the services of a printer,
and then distributed the leaflet to the Anglican clergy in North America
(Figures 4–7).18
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 9

Figure 4 Bishop of London, Letter of Introduction to the clergy in the colonies,

The Fulham Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 9,
Volume, 12: 49.

The bishop’s questionnaire represented the first official bid to compile

an accurate account of the Church of England’s work in the New World.
(To be sure, prior to the Peace of Paris, neither the Crown nor the Church
of England had shown much interest in the Atlantic colonies.) In seventeen
queries, he sought to determine the state of religion in the colonies overseas.
With that foremost on his mind, the bishop asked questions about the sizes
10 Book History

Figure 5 Bishop of London, Letter of Introduction to the clergy in the colonies,

The Fulham Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 9,
Volume, 12: 49.
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 11

Figure 6 Bishop of London, “Queries To be answered by every MINISTER,”

The Fulham Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 6,
Volume, 12: 48.

of parish congregations, the manner in which services were conducted, and

the nature of the parson’s provisions. He also sought a report about the edu-
cational work being done among the colonies’ slaves and likewise among
Native Americans. Expecting a full and candid account, he inquired: “Are
there any Infidels, bond or free, within your Parish; and what means are
used for their conversion?”19
Considering the influence of Morgan Godwyn’s Negro’s & Indians Ad-
vocate in London several years earlier, it is hardly unreasonable to assume
that his fervent petition concerning slaves and Native Americans may have
12 Book History

Figure 7 Bishop of London, “Queries To be answered by every MINISTER,”

The Fulham Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Microfilm, Reel 6,
Volume, 12: 48.

exerted some influence (if not indirectly) on the bishop of London when
he prepared his “Paper of Enquiries” (Figure 8). After all, the two men
did work within the same coterie of clerics. When he originally published
his Advocate, Godwyn clearly sought a broad circle of readers within the
church by enlisting the archbishop of Canterbury’s patronage. “To the most
Reverend Father in God,” the prefatory letter in his Advocate made plain,
WILLIAM [Sancroft] by in Divine Providence, Lord Arch-Bishop of Can-
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 13

terbury. . . . Of all England Primate and Metropolitan. . . . It is at once both

the Duty and Interest of these Papers to beseech your Favour and Patronage
. . . to give them that Reputation and Lustre which of themselves they want-
ed, and to supply all Defects and Errors of the unskilful Author.” Even
though Gibson was not the bishop of London at the time when Godwyn
published his observations concerning slavery in Virginia in the 1680s, he
more than likely read Godwyn’s appeal. What’s more, it is also possible
(considering the wording of his query) that the bishop’s request concerning
slaves may have been an astutely crafted response to the “Strange Lines . .
. his Lord Ships hands” received from Virginian slaves who petitioned him
shortly after his appointment to the office.20
Whatever his reasons, the parsons in Virginia received the bishop’s ques-
tionnaire and were perhaps the most anxious to respond of the southern
colonies. Indeed, while there appears to be but a few extant replies from
the other colonies, not so in the tobacco colony, where the parsons replied
enthusiastically. Of the fifty-four parishes that existed in Virginia at the time
Edmund Gibson dispatched his inquiry, twenty-eight responses have sur-
vived, accounting for over one-half of the churches in the colony. Similarly,
measured from region to region, almost half of the number of the parsons
in Virginia sent the bishop accounts of the Anglican Church in the Chesa-
peake. The replies were most forthcoming from the parsons located in the
Tidewater region of the colony, which was settled first. From there, the
replies to the bishop of London appear to follow the general dispersion pat-
tern of the population in Virginia (Table 1).
From their replies to the bishop’s queries emerges an insightful portrait
of race and the old church in the New World. Early Virginians were devout
people. From all walks of life, from the gentry to the merchant class, from
artisans to yeoman farmers, from indentured servants to black slaves, they
attended church and did so regularly. Every Sunday, they observed with
reverence the church’s teachings as each sat in accord to their social rank,
enacting the Anglican ethos of an orderly cosmos and a reasonable God.
But for all their piety, Virginians had grown far more dependent on Afri-
can slave labor over the four decades since Godwyn had framed his Negro’s
and Indians Advocate. Though they were God-fearing people, the ministers’
replies told Gibson, most slaveholders were indifferent about fulfilling their
duties as masters, which included baptizing and instructing their people. To
be sure, by the late 1720s many of them had grown ambivalent toward the
judgment of their forefathers, who in 1662 registered their “contempt” for
those who refused to have their “children” baptized in the form of legisla-
tion that fined such individuals the large sum of “two thousand pounds of
14 Book History

Table 1
Virginia Parsons’ Replies to the Bishop of London in 1723/4.
Number of Number of
Regions Parishes % Replies %
Tidewater 28 51.85 14 50
Piedmont 13 24.07 7 25
Southside 8 14.81 4 14.28
Mountain 3 5.55 1 3.57
Eastern 2 3.70 2 7.14
Sources: Bishop of London, Fulham Papers at Lambeth Palace Library, London, World Mi-
crofilm, Reel 6, Volume 12: 41-84; Joan Rezner Gundersen, The Anglican Ministry in Virginia,
1723–1766 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), 8–9.

tobacco.” Despite this penalty, the clergy’s work seemed an uphill struggle
for the spiritual well-being of their slave parishioners. As the bishop’s cor-
respondents told it, they were powerless to impose their will on reluctant
masters.21
Of the twenty-eight letters that have survived, eighteen indicated that
while some masters saw to it that their slaves were baptized and instructed,
most did not. “We’ve no infidels, that are free,” reported Henry Collins,
the rector of St. Peter’s Parish in New Kent County, “but a great many
Negro–bondslaves; some of which are suffered by the respective Masters
to be baptized . . . but others are not.” The parson’s conclusion was pre-
cise; during the 1720s only 15 percent of the 283 slaves whose births were
carefully recorded by Collins in the church register were subsequently bap-
tized. George Robertson, the rector of Bristol Parish in James City County,
expressed similarly accurate sentiments, succinctly writing, “Some masters
instruct Slaves at home or bring them to baptism, but not many.” In his
parish, no more than 7 percent of slave infants were baptized in the 1720s
(Table 2).22
Most ministers in Virginia blamed masters for the poor health of religion
in the colony. Finding little fault in themselves, they pinned the shortcom-
ings of the church on the gentry. Reverend James Blair of Bruton Parish
admonished those who owned slaves and who refused to bring them to
church. The commissary of the colony up until the 1740s and the esteemed
president of the College of William and Mary, Blair spoke not only for him-
self but also for six other ministers when he observed that he had “No infi-
dels, but slaves. I encourage the baptising and catechizing of such of them as
understand English, and exhort their Masters to bring them to Church and
baptise the infant slaves.”23
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 15

Table 2
Slave Births & Baptisms Measured, 1700–1779.
Periods Births Baptized %
St. Peters
1700–1709 70 — —
1710–1719 127 2 1.57
1720–1729 283 43 15.19
1730–1739 243 91 37.44
1740–1749 8 2 25
1750–1759 85 29 34.11
1760–1769 32 5 15.25
1770–1779 18 5 27.77
Bristol
1700-1709 — — —
1710-1719 8 — —
1720–1729 112 8 7.14
1730–1739 98 14 14.28
1740–1749 76 20 26.31
1750–1759 38 — —
1760–1769 9 — —
1770–1779 — — —
Albemarle
1700–1709 — — —
1710–1719 — — —
1720–1729 2 — —
1730–1739 65 — —
1740–1749 408 35 8.57
1750–1759 504 124 24.60
1760–1769 584 384 65.75
1770–1779 319 306 95.92
Note: Incomplete slave birth and baptism data not included.
Sources: Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, trans. & ed. The Vestry Book and Register of St.
Peter’s Parish, New Kent and James City counties, Virginia, 1684-1786; Churchill Gibson
Chamberlayne, trans. & ed., The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, Virginia, 1720–
1789; Gertrude R.B. Richards, trans. & ed., Register of Albemarle Parish, Surry and Sussex
Counties, 1739–1778.

Alexander Scott was not quite so restrained. Rather than graciously con-
cede any fault on his part, the cleric of Overworton Parish in Stafford Coun-
ty placed the burden of slaves’ instruction firmly on their masters’ shoul-
ders: “The Children of [Negro slaves] and those of them that can speak and
understand the English Language we instruct and baptise if [we are] permit-
ted by their Masters.” John Brunskill, the parson of Wilmington Parish in
16 Book History

James City County, gave a more stinging account when he wrote: “There
is no law of the Colony obliging their masters or Owners to Instruct them
in the principles of Christianity.” Even if there were such legislation, they
would hardly comply because “they are hardly persuaded by the Ministers
to take so much pains by them; by which Means of poor Creatures generally
live & die without it.”24
The parsons’ reports notwithstanding, most slaveholders considered
themselves good stewards of their bondspeople. Many likened themselves to
the patriarchs of the Old Testament. William Byrd II, the Lord of Westover,
for one, certainly took pride in this fatherly role. “I have a large family,” he
boasted to an English aristocrat in 1726. “Like one of the Patriarchs, I have
my Flocks and my Herds, Bond-men and Bond-women, and every Soart of
Trade amongst my own Servants, so that I live in a kind of Independence on
everyone but Providence. . . . I must take care to keep all my people at their
duty, to set all the spring in motion, and to make every one draw his equal
share to carry the machine forward.”25
Such pride, however, concealed the fact that many slaveholders were not
concerned with the spiritual welfare of their slaves, let alone teaching them
how the read. That type of instruction, they believed, served only to make
slaves saucy and rebellious. As early as 1680 Godwyn registered that much
in his Negro’s and Indians Advocate, as well as noting that some masters
claimed that their slaves were either utterly incapable of instruction or that
their “want of English” made it “Impossible” to affect “any thing upon
them.”26
In spite of this indifference, a number of the colony’s clerics did achieve
some success. William Black boasted about his work among the colony’s
slaves. Since his arrival in 1709, the rector of Accomako Parish claimed that
he had baptized about 200 slaves, if not more. William LeNeve, the rector
of James City Parish, performed similar work. In 1724 he wrote: “My Lord,
I can’t say we have any Freeman Infidels; but our negro Slaves, imported
daily are altogether ignorant of God & Religion, & in truth have so little
Docility in them that they scare [sic] ever become capable of Instruction:
but, My Lord I have examined and improved several Negroes natives of
Virginia, and I hope in God that, by due Observance of the Directions for
ye Catechist & printed by Orders of the Society for the Propagation of ye
Gospel in Foreign Parts, I shall labour to plant that seed among them, wch
will produce a blessed Harvest.”27
Although most parsons indicated whether slaves were instructed, only a
few addressed directly the bishop’s query as to the means they had used “for
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 17

their conversion.” Some slaves, according to James Falconer, the church-

warden in Elizabeth City County, were taught by their masters and at home.
Afterward, they were brought to church for confirmation. But recently im-
ported Africans, he observed, were “impossible to instruct” because they
were not “able either to speak or understand our language perfectly.” Dan-
iel Taylor, the parson of the church in Blissland Parish in New Kent, ex-
pressed a similar opinion, writing, “None but negro Slaves most of which
are not Capable of instruction. Those that are Children my own & many
others I have instructed & Baptized.”28
Other church rectors were only a little more precise in explaining their
methods. Francis Fontaine, the pastor of York-Hampton Parish, wrote,
“I know of no Infidels in my Parish except Slaves. I exhort their Master
to send them to me to be instructed. And in Order to their Conversion I
have set a part every Saturday in the afternoon and Catechize them at my
Glebe house.” Working along similar lines, his brother Peter, the minister of
Westover Parish, wrote, “I take all opportunity both Publick and private to
extort all Masters and mistresses to Instruct their Slaves in ye Principles of
Christianity and to send them to Church to be [baptized?] and instructed by
me during ye time of Catechetical [lectures?] which I begin in April and con-
tinue every Lord’s day.” Asked about his method of converting infidels at his
Southwark Parish, John Cargill told the bishop, “There is a Town of Indians
made up of the Scatter’d Remains of four or five towns seated on the fron-
tier of my Parish where for sometime, there was a School for [Charles Grif-
fin?] to Teach ye. But he is now removed to the Sect[ion] of the Government
where he [teaches?] Indian children from the several Nations in the Colony
has a Sallary out of Mr. Boyle’s Legacy name . . . as to ye Negro Slaves there
some of their Masters on whom I do prevail to have ye baptized: I taught,
but not many.”29 (Incidentally, the Indian school Cargill referenced is un-
doubtedly the Brafferton in Williamsburg, which instructed Native Ameri-
cans by way of biblical literacy [reading] as early as the 1690s.30)
By contrast, some of the ministers were quite vague. Lewis Latane, for
example, explained his method of converting slaves as simply involving a
series of questions. Thomas Dell, the parson of Hungars Parish, seemed to
have relied solely on oral instruction as well: “There are Infidels bond and
free. No other method used throughout ye Colony but Ordinary Preach-
ing.” Thomas Hughes of Abingdon Parish employed a similar method to
instruct the infidels at his church.31
Most parsons in Virginia agreed that country-born slaves were more
likely to receive baptism and instruction than their African counterparts, if
18 Book History

for no reason than they were more likely to understand English. As a result,
some slaves who received the sacrament also received instruction. In most
instances, instruction more than likely occurred before baptism, and reading
came to represent an essential part of that instruction.
Reading is, after all, what the bishop had in mind when he dispatched
his questionnaire. In 1729 he made that much plain when he responded to
the parsons’ letters by publishing two letters of his own, addressed to “the
Masters and Mistresses . . . in the English PLANTATIONS . . . [and to]
the MISSIONARIES there.” Much as Godwyn had done years earlier, Gib-
son admonished those who had refused to instruct “their NEGROES in the
Christian Faith” and those ministers in the colonies who refused to perform
their duty. Put off by their woeful neglect of their obligation, an obligation
that traces its roots possibly back to Martin Luther and his call for vernacu-
lar biblical literacy (reading), he judged their reasons for not proselytizing
as self-serving. Besides beseeching colonial planters to consider themselves
“not only as Masters, but as Christian Masters, who stand oblig’d by your
Profession to do all that your Station and Condition enable you to do, to-
wards . . . enlarging the Kingdom of Christ,” Gibson encouraged them to
invest in schools to educate blacks. “Considering the Greatness of the Profit
that is receiv’d from their Labours,” he observed, “it might be hop’d that
all Christian Masters, those especially who possess’d of considerable Num-
bers, should also be at some small Expence in providing . . . a common
Teacher, for the Negroes belonging to them.” The London-based Society
for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the head of the SPG went on,
it is “sufficiently sensible of the great Importance and Necessity of such an
establish’d and regular Provision for the Instruction of the Negroes . . . that
it may please God.”32
Ever a skillful diplomat, however, the bishop tempered his criticism by
conceding to slaveholders that he saw no conflict between teaching blacks
to read the Gospels and maintaining the institution of slavery at the same
time. Far from it, such instruction in religion, he reasoned, served everyone’s
best interest as it made slaves content: “The embracing of the Gospel, does
not make the least Alternation in Civil Property, or in any of the Duties
which belong to Civil Relations; but in all these Respects, it continues Per-
sons just in the same State as it found them.”33
Asserting that adherence to Christianity does not alter the status of a
slave, the bishop had simply restated the Church of England’s doctrine. As
the church’s book of catechism explained, when asked, “What is thy duty
towards thy Neighbour,” prospective converts were expected to reply, “To
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 19

honour, and obey the King. . . . To submit myself to all my governors, teach-
ers, spiritual pastors and masters. To order myself lowly and reverently to
all my betters . . . and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall
please God to call me.” Or as Jesus admonished the church, “Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s.”34
Either way, the laurel branch Gibson extended to Virginia slaveholders also
echoed the sentiments that their forefathers expressed in legislation in 1667.
The bishop also chastised the clergy in the colonies. As he had with the
masters and mistresses who were in charge of the plantations, Gibson called
for greater missionary zeal that included lessons in reading: “Having under-
stood by many Letters from the Plantations, and by Accounts of Persons
who have come from thence . . . I would also hope, that the Schoolmasters
in several Parishes, parts of whose Business it is to instruct Youth in the
Principles of Christianity . . . [carry] on this Work . . . on the Lord’s Day,
when both they and the Negroes are most at Liberty.”35
This reprimand, albeit well placed, offered little in the way of revelation.
Many of the parsons in Virginia had already expressed a similar position
when it came to the subject of baptizing and instructing slaves. William
LeNeve, for example, rector of James City Parish in Williamsburg, had al-
ready been using books provided by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel to “produce a blessed Harvest” among his slave parishioners. The
same was also true of the Reverend James Blair. In 1699, long before the
bishop sent out his questionnaire, the Bruton Parish parson circulated “A
Proposition for encouraging the Christian Education of Indian, Negro and
Mulatto Children.” The bishop of London’s representative in the colony,
Commissary Blair proposed a bargain with slave masters. In exchange for
allowing “the good instruction and Education of their Heathen Slaves in the
Christian faith,” “Masters and Mistresses of this Countrey” would be “ex-
empted” from all taxes on those slaves until they reached the age eighteen.36
Taking into account E. Jennifer Monaghan’s, John C. Van Horne’s, Jeffrey
H. Richards’s, and others’ studies of slave literacy and Protestantism in co-
lonial America, education or schooling meant more than just oral instruc-
tion. It meant reading as well. Still, judging from the extant record, nothing
appears to have come of Blair’s plan to educate slaves.37
20 Book History

“Broatt up in the way”: Slave Education in the

Tobacco Colony, 1724–1760
The bishop’s effort to encourage Virginian parsons to instruct their slaves
did, however, inspire some to act. Shortly after receiving his communiqué,
some of the clerics of the colony took to heart his scolding of them. Indeed,
prospects for slave religion through letters improved over the next quarter-
century. Unbeknownst to him, there were several factors working in the
bishop’s favor. For one thing, around the time he encouraged greater work
among slaves, the colony began to prosper, which in turn fostered the devel-
opment of a more extensive Anglican establishment, with vestries supplied
by regular rectors enjoying lifetime commissions. Second, and perhaps most
important, the cultural gap between masters and slaves narrowed. From the
1720s on, Africans in Virginia gave way to creoles or country-born blacks
in the labor force. By the 1740s bondsmen born in the country comprised
well over 60 percent of the slave population. This change, as Kulikoff’s,
Morgan’s, and Parents’s studies have demonstrated, altered the relationship
between masters and slaves.38 Ruling over people born and raised among
them, white Virginians could no longer invoke blacks’ “strangeness” to jus-
tify their neglect of their Christian duty. Instead, some came to view them-
selves as benevolent patriarchs overseeing the care of dependent slaves. Less
than a generation removed from patriarchs like William Byrd II, Thomas
Jefferson also considered his slaves as more than property. In her account
of the sage of Monticello, Lucia Stanton noted that Jefferson spoke fondly
about his slaves, all of whom he viewed as his “children” whose toil formed
the cornerstone of his “happiness.” What’s more, according to a recent
study by Heath (and, of course, my own), among the responsibilities he
assumed was the religious instruction of his people, which meant teaching
some of them to read. While Jefferson allowed some to be taught, others
taught themselves.39
The self-styled Deist was not the only one who advocated slave litera-
cy. James Blair’s successor as commissary, William Dawson, the rector of
Jamestown Parish and the president of the College of William and Mary,
also did the same. In May 1739 he wrote Gibson, requesting of the bishop
of London a “collection of religious books . . . for the benefit of the Negroes
& the Poor of this colony.” Like other Virginian parsons, Dawson achieved
some degree of success among the slaves under his charge. James Blair, the
nephew of the late commissary, concurred. In 1743 he wrote Gibson to that
effect: “I cannot help adding, though I am sensible I trespass on your Lord-
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 21

ship precious moments, That I perceive with pleasure a zealous disposition

in our new President to co-operate with your Lordships pious endeavours
for the instruction of the negroes here in the principles of christianity. I
find his laboring among such as he thinks are well disposed that way to get
school set up here for the purpose.” Around the same time that Blair wrote
Gibson, the commissary’s plan to teach slaves had begun to bear fruit. In
a letter addressed to Henry Newman, secretary of the Society for Promot-
ing Christian Knowledge, he requested an additional number of tracts on
“charity schools . . . which, with some little Alteration, [he believed] will
suit a Negro School in our metropolis, when we shall have the Pleasure
of seeing One established.” By May 1750, a delighted Dawson wrote the
bishop: “Many tell me that such schools are wanted here. I cannot deny it,
and therefore am now endeavouring to get such erected in all our parishes.
There are three such schools in my parish.” Unfortunately, except for the
reverend’s letters, there is no other evidence of these schools, except perhaps
for a bill to Dawson’s estate, dated “October, 1754” to one Elizabeth Wyatt
for “1.6” pounds for “the schooling [his] Negro girl Jinny for one year.”40
Church registers documenting the baptism of slaves in rising numbers
from the 1720s on also attest to this changing relationship between masters
and slaves. Within the canons of the Church of England, baptism admitted
individuals into Christian fellowship. As the twenty-seventh article of the
Anglican faith explained: “Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and
mark of difference; whereby Christian men are discerned from others that
be not christened: but it is also a sign of Regeneration, or new birth, where-
by, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into
the Church.” Customarily performed on infants and young children, the rite
of baptism welcomed slaves alongside whites as members of the parish.41
Consider the register of St. Peter’s Parish in New Kent County. During
the latter part of the seventeenth century, only a negligible number of slaves’
births were recorded, and not one was followed by baptism or christening.
But by the first half of the eighteenth century, those figures had changed.
Between 1700 and 1709, 70 slave births appeared in the church’s register.
Once again, none were baptized. In the following decade, the number of
slave births stepped up to 127. Significantly, two of those slaves were con-
firmed as members of the Church of England in Virginia: William Clopton’s
slave John and Captain Richard Littlepage’s slave Richard. In the 1720s,
43 out of 283 slaves received the sacrament at St. Peter’s Church. By the
ensuing decade that figure had doubled, while the overall number of slave
births remained nearly the same. In the decades leading up to the American
22 Book History

Table 3
Slave Births & Baptisms, 1660-1779.
Periods Births Baptized %
St. Peters
1660-1669 1 — —
1670-1679 4 — —
1680-1689 42 — —
1690-1699 28 — —
1700-1709 70 — —
1710-1719 127 2 1.57
1720-1729 283 43 15.19
1730-1739 243 91 37.44
1740-1749 8 2 25
1750-1759 85 29 34.11
1760-1769 32 5 15.25
1770-1779 18 5 27.77

Christ Church
1660-1669 8 — —
1670-1679 4 — —
1680-1689 — — —
1690-1699 33 — —
1700-1709 115 11 9.56
1710-1719 78 3 3.84
1720-1729 517 8 1.54
1730-1739 580 22 3.79
1740-1749 346 — —
1750-1759 124 — —
1760-1769 18 2 11.11
1770-1779 16 1 6.25
Note: Incomplete slave birth and baptism data not included.
Sources: Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, trans. & ed. The Vestry Book and Register of St.
Peter’s Parish, New Kent and James City counties, Virginia, 1684-1786; The Parish Register of
Christ Church, Middlesex County, Va., from 1653 to 1812.

Revolution, one-quarter of all the slaves whose births were published in St.
Peter’s church register were baptized (Tables 3–4).
Incidentally, slave baptisms constituted an expense for slaveholders. Un-
der Virginia law, parish clerks were obliged to keep registers of vital events–
births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials–affecting all souls within
their jurisdiction. Such records were of service to individuals and families,
providing official recognition of their comings and goings in this world.
That acknowledgment was acquired by paying the clerk a small fee, pre-
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 23

Table 4
Baptismal Practice a
Interval: Birth to Baptism
Parishes 0–14 15–31 1–3 4–6 6–12 <1
(Years) Days Days months months months year n/a
Christ Church
1704-1709 13 15 28 1 0 1 228
1710-1719 64 171 169 5 1 1 105
1720-1729 118 289 151 0 0 1 28
1730-1733 75 121 53 0 0 0 9

Bristol Parish
1720-1729 27 26 128 121 84 128 15
1730-1739 17 49 253 103 54 17 6
1740-1744 12 18 111 45 25 11 —

St. Peter’s Parish

1733-1739 15 75 261 55 18 3 30
1753-1760 1 46 162 13 5 3 17

Albemarle Parish
1740-1749 27 83 707 172 51 37 88
1750-1759 27 83 722 158 58 32 98
1760-1769 20 71 826 363 139 123 120
1770-1775 12 36 471 191 84 27 131
Note: a This table includes figures for both whites and slaves.
Source: John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican
Virginia, 1690-1776 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 328, 211-16.

scribed in 1686 at “five pounds of tobacco or sixpence.” Reflecting rising

prices, the charge dropped to “three pounds of tobacco” by 1713. Though
easily borne by a wealthy planter, the burden was not inconsiderable; it
could consume as much as a quarter of a small farmer’s yearly tobacco crop.
Rather than incur these costs, many planters avoided them by baptizing
slaves “at home” on the plantation. As a consequence, church registers may
actually understate the rising numbers of slave baptisms.42
Either way, extant registers suggest that in addition to representing a cer-
tain rite of passage and patriarchalism, they may yield a prospective index
of expenses some slaveholders incurred for the religious training of their
slaves baptized into the church. In that regard, particularly compelling are
the birth-to-baptismal intervals measured over time and space in early Vir-
ginia. Typically, baptisms followed shortly after birth, in accordance with
the rules set by the Book of Common Prayer, next to the Bible the main spir-
24 Book History

itual text that guided the Church of England in the Chesapeake. Ministers
of every parish were expected to “admonish the people that they bring their
children to Baptism as soon as possible after birth, and that they defer not
the Baptism longer than the fourth, or at furthest the fifth, Sunday unless
upon a great and reasonable cause.”43 As soon as a child was old enough to
learn the rudiments of religion, formal instruction was supposed to begin.
So that they know all the things “a Christian ought to know and believe to
his soul’s health,” children were expected to attend church regularly, listen
to sermons, and learn the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments.44
In this setting, birth-to-baptism intervals can be read in either one of two
ways. For some enslaved Virginians, baptism lead to instruction, and that
instruction was primarily oral in nature. But for others, baptism may have
represented either the first step toward achieving literacy or more certainly
the completion of religious instruction.45 Unlike the babies of white parish-
ioners, some infant slaves were not baptized immediately after birth. Quite
the contrary, as birth-to-baptismal intervals demonstrate, some masters
clearly waited a number of years before bringing the child to the font. That
was particularly true of slaveholders who attended church in Bruton Parish.
To judge that register, one-tenth of the slaves baptized were adults. Between
the 1740s and 1760s, 125 out of 1,024 slave parishioners who received the
sacrament were noted as “grown.”46 Considering the additional expense
that slaveholders transacted from such practices, it seems likely that baptism
demonstrated fellowship and patriarchalism and possibly literacy (Table 5).
That is certainly the view of those who lived then and wrote about it.
Consider the unsigned slave authors who wrote the bishop of London in
1723. Baptism, they noted, was thought important not simply because it
symbolized a certain rite of passage that included oral instruction but also
because it represented the first significant step for slaves learning how to
read and possibly write or, as they noted in their letter, “Broatt up in the
way.” That is to say, in addition to learning “the Lords prayer, the creed,
and the ten commandments,” they asked that they be given school lessons
that slave children may “Larnd to Reed through the Bybell.”47 Judging from
their correspondence with the bishop, they received instruction in such a
manner.
That is also what John Lewis had in mind when he wrote The Church
Catechism Explained, which had been popular in the Anglican Church in
both England and abroad. Originally published in 1700, Lewis’s primer to
the Church of England’s catechism emphasized reading as an essential part
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 25

Table 5
Slave Baptismal Practice
Interval: Birth to Baptism
Parishes less than 1–2 3–4 5–7 8–1
(Years) No. one year years years years years n/a
Christ 47 14 — — — — 33
(1700–1775)

St. Peter’s 177 62 4 2 4 3 102

(1710–1779)

Bristol 42 14 17 3 2 — 6
(1720–1749)

Albemarle 862 607 95 26 13 13 108

(1740–1779)
Sources: Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, trans. & ed. The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s
Parish, New Kent and James City counties, Virginia, 1684-1786; Gertrude R.B. Richards, trans.
& ed., Register of Albemarle Parish, Surry and Sussex Counties, 1739-1778; Churchill Gibson
Chamberlayne, trans. & ed., The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, Virginia, 1720-
1789; and, The Parish Register of Christ Church, Middlesex County, Va., from 1653 to 1812.

of practicing the Protestant faith. Worship, as he told it, was twofold–oral in

nature when in public, textual when in private. “What is it to honour God’s
word?” Lewis’s primer asked. “It is reverently to read and hear the holy
Scriptures; and to use with respect whatever has a mere immediate relation
to God and his service.” Likewise, “wherein does the private worship of
God consists?” Once again the catechist observed prescribed texts: “it con-
sist of prayer, reading, and meditation on the word and works of God.”48
Returning to correspondence between the bishop of London and the par-
sons in Virginia, the colony’s clergy concurred. Slaves baptized many years
after birth were more than likely candidates for literacy instruction. Consider
the practice of Adam Dickie, who served for fourteen years as the parson of
Drysdale Parish in Caroline County, Virginia. Though no known register for
that parish has survived, Dickie’s extant correspondence suggests that the
parson was quite concerned about the spiritual welfare of the slaves under
their care. He, too, read the Book of Common Prayer literally and observed
its teachings, despite the complaints of some who “thought it a Mighty
Scandal to have their Children repeat the Catechism with Negroes.” Ac-
cording to Dickie, older slaves generally received the sacrament of baptism
after a certain amount of oral and literacy instruction. In 1732 he boasted to
Henry Newman that he had fourteen slaves in his congregation who “could
26 Book History

answer for themselves and repeat the Catechism very distinctly.” Two years
thereafter, the Anglican minister began passing books out to those slaves
“he thought most diligent and desirous to read.” Presumably, in his parish,
slaves were initially taught to recite. Later, some of them received literacy
instruction, enabling them to read the Bible. Evidently, Dickie’s work im-
pressed a number of slaveholders who permitted slaves religious instruction.
Their slaves, as he told Henry Newman, “who formerly were thieves, lyars,
Swearers, prophaners of the Sabbath, and neglecters of their business, from
a Sense of Religion and of their Duty have left off all these things.” Appar-
ently, the secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was
also impressed–so much so that he sent the parson a packet of books to help
further his work in teaching his slave parishioners.49
Other church wardens performed similar work. Jonathan Boucher, min-
ister of the church in Hanover County, called on “a very sensible, well
dispos’d Negro” who belonged to a “Gentleman” living a mile from the
church to instruct “his poor fellow Slaves in Reading & some of the first
Principles of Religion.” While it is unclear how this slave tutor learned to
read and also how many others he instructed before coming to the atten-
tion of the county’s parson, one thing seems apparent. By 1762 this un-
named slave instructor had “betwixt Twenty & Thirty who constantly at-
tend Him.” After their reading lessons, those who graduated to the rank of
slave scholars were brought before Reverend Boucher that he “may examine
what Progress They have made.” Had they proven themselves, they were
probably confirmed as members of the congregation.50
A few years later, after he moved to St. Mary’s Parish, Boucher continued
to instruct slaves in religion through letters. “Every Sunday,” he confided
to John Waring, a fellow minister and a philanthropist, he had “twenty or
thirty who could use their prayer-books, and make the responses.” Much
as at his former post, Boucher enjoyed help. By his own admission, shortly
after he assumed his new commission he sought the assistance of “an old
Negro, or a conscientious Overseer, able to read.” By the summer of 1767
he had occasion to boast that in one day he “baptised 315 Negro Adults,
& delivered a Lecture of about an Hour’s Length, after reading Prayers to
Them, to above 3000,” which he considered with glee “the hardest Day’s
Service [he] ever had in [his] Life.” To judge from his letters, for some of
those adult Afro-Virginians, confirmation followed instruction. Though no
register has survived for Parson Boucher’s church, his account of instructing
slaves may nonetheless explain some of the birth-to-baptism intervals found
in extant church registers.51
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 27

“Godlliness Should abound among us”:

A Conclusion
Perhaps before and certainly after Virginian slaves met in secret and wrote
to the bishop of London in 1723, a small but growing number of enslaved
African Americans throughout the tobacco colony were learning at once
religion and letters.52 In their minds, religion meant the Church of England’s
prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, and the Ten Commandments. But judging from
their letter, it also meant instruction in the New Testament. “Jesus Christs,”
they reminded the bishop, “commaded us to seeke first the kingdom of god
and all things shall be addid un to us.” Clearly, on one level, this invocation
of Matthew reflects the church’s efforts to reassure slaves that their “Suf-
fvering” would one day earn them the otherworldly reward of paradise. On
another level, however, particularly considering the context of their appeal
to the bishop and the king of England, this invocation of the apostle could
also represent yet another veiled condemnation of slavery in that Christ ac-
knowledged simultaneously in the sixth chapter the universality of man-
kind, God’s ultimate sovereignty over man, and the corrupt and evil nature
of the current world. Like Moses of the Old Testament, Jesus (the second
Moses) promised deliverance. Whatever the case may have been, for black
Virginians, religion meant biblical instruction: reading. Writing was prob-
ably something many had taught themselves. Moreover, considering John
Thornton’s work regarding Angolan Africans in early Virginia, it is conceiv-
able that a number of slaves in the colony may have received similar instruc-
tion before crossing the Atlantic—perhaps as early as the 1630s and 1640s.53
Ultimately, if the anonymous 1723 slave letter tells us anything, it is that
African Americans took their lessons in religion and letters seriously. In their
determination that “Godlliness Should abound among us,” they forged the
beginnings of the African American literacy tradition. Besides lamenting
their deplorable plight, they denounced slaveholders as hypocrites. Indeed,
they judged them charlatans, insincere stewards who broke both the laws of
God and of man by making “them and there seed [all mulattoes] SLaves for-
ever.”54 They also condemned slave owners who denied them their human-
ity and the sacrament of marriage. They declared unfit masters who forbade
biblical literacy instruction, instruction that would later prove essential to
subsequent generations of enslaved Virginians who would use their lessons
in letters to create the slave spirituals of the nineteenth century that reflected
a different reading and understanding of the Bible. But probably most im-
portant, the unnamed slave writers expressed their uncompromising desire,
despite all odds, to “Larnd to Reed through the Bybell.”55
28 Book History

APPENDIX
Transcription of the Anonymous 1724 Slave Letter.

[first page]
A [cancellation]
August the forth 1723
to The Right Raverrand father in god my Lord arch Bishop of Lonnd
this corns to sattesfie your honour that there is in this Land of
verJennia a Sort
of people that is Calld molatters which are Baptised and brouaht up in
the way
of the Christan faith and the and followes the wayes and Rulles of the
Chrch of
England and sum of them has white fathars and sum white mothers and
there is
in this Land a L Law or act which keeps and makes them and there seed
SLaves forever - -
and most honoured sir a mongst the Rest of your Charitabell acts and
deed wee
humbly your humbell and pou poore partishinners doo begg Sir your aid
and
assisttancce in this one thing which Lise as I doo understand of in
your
LordShips brest which is that yr honour your honour will by the help
of our
Suffervering [i.e., sovereign] Lord King George and the Rest of the
Rullers will
Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg and this wee beg for Jesus
Christs his of
Sake who has commaded us to seeke first the kingdom of god god and all
things shall be addid un un to us
and here it is to bee notd that one brother is a SLave to another and
one Sister
to an othe which is quite out of the way and as for mee [cancellation]
my selfe I
am my brothers SLave but my name is Secrett
and here it is to bee notd againe that wee are commandded to keep
holey the
Sabbath day and wee doo hardly know when it comes for our
[cancellation]
task mastrs are has hard with us as the Egypttions was with the
Chilldann of
Issarall god be marcifll unto us
[second page]
here follows our hard service Sevarity and Sorrowfull Sarvice we are
hard used
up on Every account wee f in the first place wee are in Ignorance of
our
Salvation and in the next place wee are kept out of the Church and and
matri-
mony is deenied us
and to be plain they doo Look no more up on us then if wee ware dogs
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 29

which I
hope when these Strange Lines comes to your Lord Ships hands will be
Looket
in to
and here wee beg for Jesus Christs his Sake that as your honour do
hope for the
marcy of god att the day of death and the Redemtion of our Savour
Christ that
when this comes to your Lord Ships hands your honour wll Take Sum
pitty of
us who is your humble butt Sorrowfull portitinors
and Sir wee your humble perticners do humblly beg the favour of your
Lord
Ship that your honour will grant and Settell one thing upon us which
is that
our eh childarn may be broatt up in the way of the Christtian faith
and our
desire is that they may be Larnd the Lords prayer the creed and the
ten com-
mandements and that they may appeare Every Lord’s day att Church
before the
C Curatt to bee Exammond for our desire is that godllines Shoulld
abbound
amongs us and wee desire that our Childarn be putt to Scool and and
Larnd to
Reed through the Bybell
[third page]
which is all att prasant with our prayers to god for itts good Success
before your honour these from your humbell Servants in the Lord
my Riting is vary bad I whope yr honour will take the will for the
deede
I am but a poore SLave th that writt itt and has no other tinme time
butt
Sunday and hardly that att Sumtimes
September the 8th 1723
To the Right Reverrand father in d god
my Lord arch bishup of J London
these with care
wee dare nott Subscribe any mans name to this for feare of our masters
if for if
they knew that wee have Sent home to your honour wee Should goo neare
to
Swing upon the gallass tree

Notes

1. Anonymous letter [to the bishop of London], August 4, 1723, The Fulham Papers at
Lambeth Palace Library, 42 vols., (Swem Library, College of William and Mary, microfilm)
17:167–168 (hereafter all references to the Fulham Papers will be cited as Fulham Papers).
The bishop of London is an ordinary of the Church of England whose purview included Great
Britain’s North American colonies.
2. Christopher Hagar’s new study of slaves writing in nineteenth-century America raises
some interesting insights about the struggle slaves underwent in the act of writing texts. In all
30 Book History

likelihood, the same had been true of eighteenth-century slaves writing. In other words, just as
the case was of Thomas Ducket and numerous other enslaved African Americans, the awkward
spelling and shaky penmanship of the Virginian slave writers reflect not only the time in which
they lived (eighteenth-century spelling lack standardization), but also serve as a testimony of
their anguish. Christopher Hager, Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), 18, 24–53.
3. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168.
4. Ibid.
5. John C Van Horne, Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery: The Correspondence
of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717–1777; Terry L. Meyers, “Benjamin Franklin, the College
of William and Mary, and the Williamsburg Bray School,” Anglican and Episcopal History 79
(December 2010): 368–393; E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial
America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005); Janet D. Cornelius, When I Can
Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia: Uni-
versity of South Carolina Press, 1991); Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American
Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); John
K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690–
1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Joan Rezner Gundersen, The
Anglican Ministry in Virginia, 1723–1766 (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1972).
6. E. Jennifer Monaghan, Reading and Writing in Colonial America; Nelson, Blessed
Company; Gundersen, Anglican Ministry in Virginia.
7. In his recent study of letter writing and communication in early America, Konstantin
Dierks notes a distinction between writing and penmanship or, as he puts it, the “epistolary
divide.” In short, writing represents a skill, the penmanship an art, whereby colonials ascended
the letter of social mobility. In their efforts to write themselves, the authors of the anonymous
letter appear to have occupied the middle group between the two. One the one hand, their
writing functioned as a way to voice their grievances; on the other, however, their use of script
served the added benefit of demonstrating their humanity. Konstantin Dierks, In My Power:
Letter Writing and Communications in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 2011), xvi–xvii.
8. Antonio T. Bly, “Slave Literacy and Orality,” in The World of a Slave: Encyclopedia
of Material Slave Life, ed. Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice (Santa Barbara, Calif.:
Greenwood, 2011), 1:11–15. Essentially, the African American literacy tradition represents the
center of what Albert Raboteau and Lawrence Levine would call Afro-Christianity, or what
Robert M. Calhoon defines as “Primitive Christianity,” an articulation of Christendom that
embraced its own unique and durable sense of ecclesiology. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion:
The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978);
Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought
from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Robert McCluer Cal-
houn, Political Moderation in America’s First Two Centuries (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2009), 196–261.
9. According to Monaghan, reading and writing were taught separately. Moreover, writ-
ing was considered a specialized skilled reserved for a select few artisans and businessmen.
Penmanship, by comparison, represented more an art than a skill, and, as such, it was limited
to the well-to-do. But over the course of the eighteenth century, as Dierks explains, the mystery
of penmanship will be revealed to men (and eventually women) of the lower classes with the
publication of writing manuals. E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Reading for the Enslaved, Writing
for the Free: Reflections on Liberty and Literacy,” Proceeding of the American Antiquarian
Society 108 (1998): 309–341; E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Literacy Instruction and Gender in
Colonial New England,” in Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy N.
Davidson (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), 53–80; Konstantin Dierks, “The
Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 1750–1800,” in Letter Writing as a Social
Practice, ed. David Barton and Nigel Hall, 31–41; Konstantin Dierks, “Letter Writing, Station-
ary [sic] Supplies, and Consumer Modernity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World,” Early
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 31

American Literature 41, no. 3 (November 2006): 474–494; Antonio T. Bly, “‘Pretends he can
read’: Runaways and Literacy in Colonial America, 1730–1776,” Early American Studies: An
Interdisciplinary Journal 6, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 261–294.
10. William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of all the Law of
Virginia . . . 13 vols. (Richmond, Va.: Samuel Pleasants Jr., 1819–1823), 2:481–482 (hereafter
all references to the Statutes will be cited as SAL).
11. Hening, SAL, 2:481; Lathan A. Windley, A Profile of Runaway Slaves in Virginia and
South Carolina, 1730–1787 (New York: Garland, 1995), 4–10.
12. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168. Interestingly, former slave and abolitionist Frederick
Douglass offers us a useful reason why those Virginia slaves wrote. Writing nearly a century
later in his 1845 Narrative, Douglass noted that writing signified liberty, not to mention an
articulation of humanity. By mastering penmanship, a slave could write himself or herself free.
Simply put, they registered at once their existence and their free will. Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office,
1845), 36–44, esp. 42.
13. SAL, 2:260.
14. Konstantin Dierks, In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early Amer-
ica (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), xvii.
15. T. H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eigh-
teenth-Century,” Past & Present 119 (May 1988): 73–104; Dierks, “Letter Writing,” 473–474.
16. Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, 1669–1748: A Study in Politics
and Religion in the Eighteenth-Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 333–375.
17. Ibid., 343, 365.
18. Bishop of London, Letter of Introduction to Colonial Clergy, November 2, 1723,
Fulham Papers, 12:48.
19. Sykes, Edmund Gibson, 331; Fulham Papers, 12:48.
20. Fulham Papers, 17:167.
21. SAL, 2:166.
22. Henry Collings, St. Peter’s Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:53;
George Robertson, Bristol Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:79.
23. James Blair, Bruton Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:48.
24. Alexander Scott, Overworton Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:81;
John Brunskill, Wilmington Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:51.
25. William Byrd to Earl of Orrery, July 5, 1726, in Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography 32 (December 1924): 27.
26. Morgan Godwyn, The Negro’s & Indians Advocate, Suing for their Admission into
the Church or A Persuasive to the Instructing and Baptizing of the Negro’s and Indians in our
Plantations (London: J. D., 1680), 101.
27. William Black, Accomako Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:47;
William LeNeve, James City Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:78.
28. James Falconer, Elizabeth City Parish, to the Bishop of London in Fulham Papers,
12:56; Daniel Taylor, Blissland Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:82.
29. Francis Fontaine, York-Hampton Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers,
12:58; Peter Fontaine, Westover Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:59; John
Cargill, Southwark Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:52.
30. Karen A Stuart, “‘So Good a Work’: The Brafferton School, 1690–1777” (Ph.D. diss.,
College of William and Mary, 1984), 2–11; Terri Keffert, “The Education of the Native Ameri-
can in Colonial, with Particular Regard to the Brafferton School,” Colonial Williamsburg In-
terpreter 21 (Fall 2000): 20–21.
31. Lewis Latane, Southampton Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:77;
Thomas Dell, Hungars Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:55; Thomas
Hughes, Abingdon Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Papers, 12:74.
32. Edmund Gibson, Two Letters of the lord bishop of London: the first, to the master
and mistresses of families in the English plantations abroad; exhorting them to encourage and
32 Book History

promote the instruction of their negroes in the Christian faith. The second, to the missionaries
there; directing them to distribute the said letter, and exhorting them to give their assistance
towards the instruction of the negroes within their several parishes. To both which is prefix’d,
An address to serious Christian among our selves, to assist the Society for Propagating the
Gospels, in carrying on this work (1727; repr., London: Joseph Downing, 1729), 1, 14, 9–10;
Sykes, Edmund Gibson, 343.
33. Gibson, Two Letters, 11.
34. [Church of England], The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacra-
ments & Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (1662; repr., Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1927), 273 (hereafter, all references to the Book of Common Prayer will be cited as
BCP). For the other quote, see Mark 12:17 (King James Version).
35. Gibson, Two Letters, 17, 19. By “Schoolmasters,” Gibson referred to the parish
schools that several parsons alluded to in their replies to his original inquiry.
36. William LeNeve, James City Parish, to the Bishop of London, Fulham Paper, 12:78;
James Blair, A Proposition for encouraging the Christian Education of Indian, Negro and Mu-
latto Children, in Samuel Clyde McCulloch, “James Blair’s Plan of 1699 to Reform the Clergy
of Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 4 (January 1947): 85. Interestingly enough, consid-
ering Nelson’s study, which shows early Virginians paying substantially more per tithable for
the parish levy than for the county levy, Blair’s plan represented a considerable windfall for
slaveholders. Nelson, Blessed Company, 43.
37. Michael Anesko, “So Discreet a Zeal: Slavery and the Anglican Church in Virginia,
1680–1730,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 93, no. 3 (July 1985): 247–278.
38. Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco & Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the
Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), ch. 5; Philip
D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteen-Century Chesapeake & Low-
country, 258-259; Anthony S. Parent Jr., Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in
Virginia, 1660–1740, ch. 8.
39. Gundersen, Anglican Ministry in Virginia, ch. 4; Nelson, Blessed Company, ch. 10;
Lucia Stanton, “‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,”
in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter Onuf (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 147; Lucia Stanton, Free
Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello (Charlottesville, Va.: Thomas Jeffer-
son Foundation, 2000), 97–101, esp. 98–100; Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology
of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1999), 47–65, esp., 55; Bly, “‘Pretends he can read,’” 280–286.
40. Rev. William Dawson to the Bishop of London, May 21, 1739, in “Unpublished Let-
ter at Fulham,” William and Mary Quarterly 4 (April 1901): 223; James Blair to the Bishop
of London, May 28, 1743, in “Unpublished Letter at Fulham,” ibid., 225; William Dawson to
Henry Newman, December 22, 1743, Dawson Papers, 1728–1775, Manuscript Division, Li-
brary of Congress (Colonial Williamsburg microfilm); [Receipt from William Dawson’s estate
to Elizabeth Wyatt], Dawson Papers, 1728–1775.
41. Articles agreed upon by the arch-bishops and bishops of both provinces, and the
whole clergie; in the convocation holden at London, in the year, 1562. For the avoiding of
diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true religion (London:
Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1662), 17.
42. SAL, 3:153, 4:42–45; David Alan Williams, “The Small Farmer in Eighteenth-Centu-
ry Virginia Politics,” Agricultural History 43 (January 1969): 92.
43. BCP, 255.
44. Ibid., 254.
45. Although the subject of enslaved Virginians as parishioners of the Church of England
has been examined in the works of Nelson, Tate, Parent, and Gunderson, the birth to baptismal
intervals noted in church registers has received no attention. Nelson, Blessed Company; Thaddeus
Tate, Jr., The Negro in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, 1965), ch. 9, Parent, Foul Means, chs. 7–8; Gundersen, Anglican Ministry in Virginia.
46. John Vogt, Register for the Bruton Parish, Virginia, 1662–1792.
 Slave Education in Early Virginia 33

47. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168.

48. John Lewis, Church catechism explained, by way of question and answer, and con-
firmed by Scripture proofs: divided into five parts, and twelve sections: wherein a brief and
plain account is given of I. The Christian covenant. II. The Christian faith. III. The Christian
obedience. IV. The Christian prayer. V. The Christian sacraments (London: 1700; repr., New
York: James Oram, 1800), 40, 42. Though they were not as popular as Lewis’s primer, such was
true of several other catechetical instructional primers as well. See Ken Thomas, An exposition
of the church-catechism, or, The practice of divine love (Boston: Richard Pierce, 1688); The
Catechism resolved into an easie and useful method: wherein the principles whereof are exhib-
ited and explain’d in order, with inferences from, and references to those principles (Boston,
1723); Samuel Johnson, A short catechism for young children: proper to be taught them, before
they learn the Assembly’s, or after they have learn’d the church catechism (Philadelphia: Ant.
Armbruster, 1753); Isaac Watts, A Serious call to baptized children (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1759).
Reading, as Ian Green demonstrated in his exhaustive study of catechisms in the Church of
England, became over time commonplace. “As soon as memorizing was going well,” he noted,
“the focusing was shifted to comprehension. . . . The further we proceed in the early period
. . . the more we find catechetical authors either associating literacy with learning a catechism
or assuming that those using a form would already be literate.” That is certainly the case of
the SPG and its mission to instruct slaves and Native Americans. Ian Green, The Christian’s
ABC: Catechism and Catechizing in England, 1530–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),
ch. 5, esp. 241–242.
49. Adam Dixie to Henry Newman, June 27, 1732, Fulham Papers, 12:182–183; Henry
Newman to the Bishop of London, November 15, 1732, Fulham Papers, 12:192–193.
50. Jonathan Boucher to Rev. John Waring, April 28, 1764, in John C. Van Horne, Reli-
gious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery: The Correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray,
1717–1777 (Urbana, Ill., 1985), 206. John Waring, the secretary of the Associates of Dr. Bray,
was also an advocate proselytizing religion by way biblical literacy instruction.
51. Jonathan Boucher to Rev. John Waring, March 9, 1767, in Van Horne, Religious Phi-
lanthropy and Colonial Slavery, 255–256.
52. Antonio T. Bly’s recent study about literacy and runways indicates increasing rates of
literacy among runaways throughout colonial America that may reflect rates within the larger
slave population. Bly, “‘Pretends he can read,’” 261–294.
53. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168. John Thornton’s studies of early Africa demonstrates
that Africans from Angola were familiar with Western literacy, which may explain why some
Africans in the Virginia colony (for example, Francis Payne, Emanuel Driggus, William Har-
man, and so forth) were literate. John K. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil and Tran-
sition, 1641–1718 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), ch. 5, esp. 62–68; John
K. Thornton, “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo,
1491–1740,” Journal of African History 25 (1984): 147–167; John K. Thornton, “Early Kon-
go-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation,” History in Africa 8 (1981): 188.
54. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168. The “there seed SLaves forever” reference demonstrates
two things. First, it shows the slave writers’ understanding of colony statutes, specifically the
1691 or 1705 acts where the general assembly bound all mulatto children out until age thirty.
SAL, 3:87, 453. Second, it highlights the precarious and duplicitous nature of race, particularly
in regards to miscegenation, in colonial Virginia. To be sure, judging from the statutes passed
by the assembly, miscegenation was a persistent problem in the colony. As early as 1662, the
colony’s legislators tried to discourage interracial sex, declaring first that the children “got by
any Englishman upon a negro woman” would follow the status of its mother, and second, “if
any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee so offending
shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.” The former act referenced pertained to
indentured servants who were expected to pay a fine of 500 pounds of tobacco or, in the event
that they could not, be sentenced to an extended indenture or a public twenty-five lashes. SAL,
2:170, 115. In 1691 and 1705 the assembly would revisit the subject of miscegenation, estab-
lishing an even stricter law designed to prevent “that abominable mixture.” SAL, 3:86.
55. Fulham Papers, 17:167–168.