St. Phillip's Anglican Church, also known as the African Church, in the Kingstown area of Tortola in British Virgin Islands, was built in 1840 by a community of Africans who had been liberated from illegal slave ships.
By the early 21st century, the building had fallen into disrepair, as it had not been regularly used for decades. Efforts to stabilize the remains are underway; it is a unique historic site in the islands. Local historians claim it is the oldest free black church building to survive in the Americas. Although free African Americans established churches at the turn of the 19th century in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States, those early church buildings have been replaced.
History
The restoration work underway at St Phillip's Anglican Church to stabilize the remains
Great Britain prohibited the African slave trade under the Slave Trade Act 1807. The United States followed with its own prohibition, to go into effect in 1808. The Royal Navy patrolled the Caribbean to intercept foreign ships illegally carrying slaves to the Americas. Other parts of the fleet operated off Africa. In January 1808, HMS Cerberus seized the American schooner, the Nancy, with a cargo of enslaved Senegalese in the territory's waters. It liberated the slaves and settled the Africans in the Bahamas.
Between August 1814 and February 1815, the Royal Navy seized slave cargos from the Venus, the Manuella, the Atrevido, and the Candelaria. It deposited 1,318 liberated Africans on Tortola, which the government designated for free black settlement. In 1819, a Portuguese slave ship, the Donna Paula, was wrecked upon the reef at Anegada. The ship's crew and 235 slaves were saved from the wreckage, and taken to the islands. Other shipwrecks off Anegada were reported in 1817 and 1824. Liberated Africans sometimes died due to having suffered harsh conditions in the Middle Passage.
The British offered liberated Africans a chance to serve with the military on larger islands; an opportunity that many accepted. A number stayed and settled in the territory. They were required to serve an "apprenticeship" or indenture of 14 years, after which they were absolutely free. In 1828 the liberated Africans were given certificates of freedom, so as not to be confused with slaves.
The colonial government provided land for the liberated Africans. In 1831 the area now known as Kingstown on Tortola, which was then uninhabited, was put aside and subdivided. (This is not to be confused with Kingston, Jamaica.) Each newly freed African was allocated a plot of land for a house and growing provision crops. Many converted to Christianity. The colonial government supported their construction of an Anglican stone church close to the shore of the Kingstown area; it was dedicated to St. Phillip.
The free Africans lived in a sometimes uneasy condition between the colonial whites (who considered them a burden and likely a subversive influence on slaves) and the mass of slaves.[citation needed][1] The free Africans developed a solidarity within their community but suffered discrimination. They were relatively isolated from slaves and worked to preserve their free status.
21st century
The view from inside of the ruins of St Phillip's Church
The church is in ruins and has not been in active use for decades. Occasional civil marriage ceremonies are conducted within its walls (technically as open air ceremonies). Graffiti has been daubed on some walls. The church is on private land but the landowner allows access to visitors for sightseeing. There have been discussions about the Government or the National Parks Trust purchasing the site, but this has not occurred.
A restoration project is underway to stabilize the remains for preservation, in order to feature the site in heritage tourism. It has unique historical status as a monument of abolition of the slave trade and the territory's religious heritage.
Isaac Dookhan, History of the British Virgin Islands, ISBN0-85935-027-4
Vernon Pickering, A Concise History of the British Virgin Islands, ISBN0-934139-05-9
Footnotes
↑ Note: The Slave Trade Act 1807 prohibited the international trade in African slaves; it did not free existing slaves in the British colonies. Emancipation did not take place until after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and north-west of Anguilla. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles and part of the West Indies.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The history of the British Virgin Islands is usually, for convenience, broken up into five separate periods:
The Danish West Indies or Danish Virgin Islands or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 83 square kilometres (32 sq mi); Saint John with 49 square kilometres (19 sq mi); and Saint Croix with 220 square kilometres (85 sq mi). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.
The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
The Slave Trade Act 1807, or the Abolition of Slave Trade Act 1807, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not automatically emancipate those enslaved at the time, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.
Anegada is the northernmost of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It lies approximately 15 miles (24 km) north of Virgin Gorda. Anegada is the only inhabited British Virgin Island formed from coral and limestone, rather than being of volcanic origin. While the other islands are mountainous, Anegada is flat and low. Its highest point is only about 28 feet (8.5 m) above sea level, earning it its name, which is the Spanish term for the flooded land, "tierra anegada".
Saint John is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States.
The coastwise slave trade existed along the southern and eastern coastal areas of the United States in the antebellum years prior to 1861. Hundreds of vessels of various capacities domestically traded loads of slaves along waterways, generally from the Upper South which had a surplus of slaves to the Deep South where new cotton plantations created high demand for labor.
Tortola is the largest and most populated island of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It has a surface area of 55.7 square kilometres with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres above sea level.
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. Passed by Earl Grey's reforming administration, it expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon, and Saint Helena. The Act came into force on 1 August 1834, and was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
The liberated Africans of Sierra Leone, also known as recaptives, were Africans who had been illegally enslaved onboard slave ships and rescued by anti-slavery patrols from the West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy. After the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished Britain's involvement in the slave trade, the Admiralty established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the trade in cooperation with other Western powers. All illegally enslaved Africans liberated by the Royal Navy were taken to Freetown, where Admiralty courts legally confirmed their free status. Afterwards, they were consigned to a variety of unfree labor apprenticeships at the hands of the Nova Scotian Settlers and Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone. During the 19th century, it has been estimated by historians that roughly 80,000 illegally enslaved Africans were liberated by the Royal Navy.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. The objective of abolishing the slave trade was achieved in 1807. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies followed in 1833.
Arthur William Hodge was a Tortolan planter, politician and serial killer who was executed by hanging in 1811 for murdering one of his slaves. Born in the British Virgin Islands, Hodge studied at Oriel College, Oxford, matriculating in 1781 before briefly serving as an officer in the 23rd Regiment of Foot. Returning to Tortola in 1803, he settled down to a life as a plantation owner while also pursuing a political career, serving in both the colony's Executive Council and its Legislative Assembly. In 1811, Hodge was hanged after being found guilty of murdering a slave he owned, the first British subject to be executed for such a crime.
Piracy in the British Virgin Islands was prevalent during the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy", mainly during the years of 1690-1730. Privateering was also widely practised in the jurisdiction throughout frequent colonial wars, not least by emancipated slaves who, with in preference to back-breaking labour in the fields for pitiful wages, took enormous risks to capture fortunes on the seas with the sanction of the Crown. In 1808, Patrick Colquhoun, a prize agent for the Territory spoke of "the most daring outrages which are frequently committed by people of colour."
In common with most Caribbean countries, slavery in the British Virgin Islands forms a major part of the history of the Territory. One commentator has gone so far as to say: "One of the most important aspects of the History of the British Virgin Islands is slavery."
Virgin Islander culture reflects the various peoples that have inhabited the present-day British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands throughout history. Although the territories are politically separate, they maintain close cultural ties.
Slavery in Seychelles existed until its final abolition in 1835. Slaves were brought to the Seychelles when the island was first populated by French planters and their slaves from Mauritius. The British banned the slave trade on the island when it became British territory in 1815, and slavery itself was abolished twenty years later.
The Dutch Virgin Islands is the collective name for the enclaves that the Dutch West India Company had in the Virgin Islands. The area was ruled by a director, whose seat was not permanent. The main reason for starting a colony here was that it lay strategically between the Dutch colonies in the south and New Netherland. The Dutch West India Company was mainly affected by the competition from Denmark, England and Spain. In 1680 the remaining islands became a British colony.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
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