Black Harry was a legendary Methodist preacher of African descent who worked on Sint Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean in the 1780s and was eventually banned from the island for his beliefs.
Black Harry's real name is unknown. At the same time in the United States, there was also an African-American Methodist preacher known as Black Harry. His full name was Harry Hosier. Despite the remarkable similarities in the lives of these two men, multiple studies say that the Black Harry of Sint Eustatius and Harry Hosier were not the same preacher. [1] [2]
Where and when Black Harry was born and died is unknown. Most sources indicate that he was born in the south of the United States and that he also returned there after his forced departure from Sint Eustatius. He was on Sint Eustatius from about 1780 to 1788. There is also no consensus among the sources as to whether Black Harry was enslaved or a free man during his time on Sint Eustatius. He preached Methodism among the black population of the island, a belief that was spread in the Caribbean by missions of founders John Wesley and Thomas Coke during that period. He soon had many followers. Soon he was banned from preaching by the Reformed government, partly because he aroused revivals among his followers, which sometimes meant that they could not work for days. [3] Governor Johannes Runnels cracked down on Methodism and Black Harry, who disregarded the ban on preaching, was brutally flogged several times as punishment. Other followers of Methodism were also severely punished for attending meetings. Eventually, Black Harry was banned from the island after which he is said to have returned to the southern United States.
In 1811, a wooden church was built at the current Black Harry Lane on Sint Eustatius (formerly Kapelweg) and the Methodist congregation continued to grow. In 1846, a stone church building, Bethel Methodist Church, was built on the site of the wooden church. This church is still standing and was given monument status in 2016. [4]
Black Harry is an important part of the intangible heritage of Sint Eustatius. A street has been named after him and the story of Black Harry is still regularly brought to life during school plays. Legend has it that Black Harry cast a curse on the island when he was forced to leave.
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a branch of Protestantism whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within Anglicanism originating out of the Church of England in the 18th century and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, and today has about 80 million adherents worldwide.
The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country consisted of several island territories located in the Caribbean Sea. The islands were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the autonomous successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies. The Antilles were dissolved in 2010. The Dutch colony of Surinam, although relatively close by on the continent of South America, did not become part of the Netherlands Antilles but became a separate autonomous country in 1954. All the island territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the kingdom today, although the legal status of each differs. As a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status. People from this former territory continue to be called Antilleans in the Netherlands.
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.
Francis Asbury was a British-American Methodist minister who became one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ministry, traveling on horseback and by carriage thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.
The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself nationally. In 1939, the MEC reunited with two breakaway Methodist denominations to form the Methodist Church. In 1968, the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church.
Saba is a Caribbean island and the smallest special municipality of the Netherlands. It consists largely of the active volcano Mount Scenery, which at 887 metres (2,910 ft) is the highest point of the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands. The island lies in the northern Leeward Islands portion of the West Indies, southeast of the Virgin Islands. Together with Bonaire and Sint Eustatius it forms the BES islands, also known as the Caribbean Netherlands.
Sint Eustatius, known locally as Statia, is an island in the Caribbean. It is a special municipality of the Netherlands.
A Methodist local preacher is a layperson who has been accredited by the Methodist Church to lead worship and preach on a frequent basis. With separation from the Church of England by the end of the 18th century, a clear distinction was recognised between itinerant preachers and the local preachers who assisted them. Local preachers have played an important role in Methodism since the earliest days of the movement, and have also been important in English social history. These preachers continue to serve an indispensable role in the Methodist Church of Great Britain, in which the majority of church services are led by laypeople. In certain Methodist connexions, a person becomes a local preacher after obtaining a license to preach. In many parts of Methodism, such as the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, there are thus two different tiers of ministers—licensed preachers and ordained elders.
Oranjestad is a small town of 1,038 inhabitants; it is the capital and largest town of the island of Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean Netherlands. It’s not to be confused with the far larger Oranjestad in Aruba.
Jacob Albright was an American Christian leader, founder of Albright's People which was officially named the Evangelical Association in 1816. This church as a denomination is still in existence, headquartered in Myerstown, Pennsylvania.
Circuit riders were clergy assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. Circuit riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church and related denominations, although similar itinerant preachers could be found in other faiths as well, particularly among minority faith groups. They were most prominent during the early years of the United States, from 1784–1830, and were part of the Second Great Awakening revival movement.
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain, and the mother church to Methodists worldwide. It participates in the World Methodist Council, and the World Council of Churches among other ecumenical associations.
The Christmas Conference was an historic founding conference of the newly independent Methodists within the United States held just after the American Revolution at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784.
St. George's United Methodist Church, located at the corner of 4th and New Streets, in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the oldest Methodist church in continuous use in the United States, beginning in 1769. The congregation was founded in 1767, meeting initially in a sail loft on Dock Street, and in 1769 it purchased the shell of a building which had been erected in 1763 by a German Reformed congregation. At this time, Methodists had not yet broken away from the Anglican Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church was not founded until 1784.
The Caribbean Netherlands is a geographic region of the Netherlands located outside of Europe, in the Caribbean, consisting of three so-called special municipalities. These are the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, as they are also known in legislation, or the BES islands for short. The islands are officially classified as public bodies in the Netherlands and as overseas territories of the European Union; as such, European Union law does not automatically apply to them.
The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and Americas is a Methodist denomination in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bonaire, the British & the US Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Connexion is divided into eight districts:
Harry Hosier, better known during his life as "Black Harry", was an African American Methodist preacher during the Second Great Awakening in the early United States. Dr. Benjamin Rush said that, "making allowances for his illiteracy, he was the greatest orator in America". His style was widely influential but he was never formally ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church or the Rev. Richard Allen's separate African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
Harry Dorsey Gough was a prominent 18th-century merchant, planter, and patron of the fledgling Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, in the early United States.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Sint Eustatius are quite progressive by Caribbean standards. Sint Eustatius forms part of the Caribbean Netherlands and is a special municipality of the Netherlands. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity are legal in Sint Eustatius, with same-sex marriage, registered partnership, and adoption being legal since 2012. In addition, discrimination on the basis of "heterosexual and homosexual orientation" is outlawed.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Sint Eustatius is part of the ongoing global viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was confirmed to have reached the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius on 31 March 2020. On 5 May all cases recovered. The island's first COVID-19 death was recorded on 19 January 2022. The patient died at the St. Maarten Medical Center (SMCC) where they had been transported for treatment according to the press release of the St. Eustatius government.