The Reverend William Troy | |
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 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 10 March 1827 |
| Died | 17 November 1905 Camden, New Jersey |
The Reverend William Troy (10 March 1827 - 17 November 1905) was a Baptist minister and writer associated with the Underground Railroad.
The Reverend William Troy | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 10 March 1827 |
| Died | 17 November 1905 Camden, New Jersey |
The Reverend William Troy (10 March 1827 - 17 November 1905) was a Baptist minister and writer associated with the Underground Railroad.
Troy was born on 10 March 1827 in Essex County, Virginia. His mother was a free black woman and she married, then bought and set free, her husband. [1]
Troy became a confirmed Christian at the age of 13, although he was discriminated against in church because he was an African American. He was baptized into the Baptist church, but he was surprised to hear that the deacons and the church pastor were giving sermons to justify their own personal trade in slaves. The pastor would sell members of his own congregation. [2] Troy and his wife left Virginia in disgust in March 1848, and moved to Cincinnati. [2]
In his new home, Reverend Troy was said to be the only "slave preacher" who was qualified to preach when he started. He was first a pastor at a church in Amherstburg in southern Canada, before settling in nearby Windsor, Ontario. [3] In 1853 he held prayer meetings that led to the laying of a foundation stone for a church in Windsor in 1858. [4] Troy founded the "First Baptist Church" in Windsor although the first local Baptist church had been established a few years before.
Troy published a book of stories taken from the lives of slaves who had escaped from the United States to Canada. His book has been cited by historians as counter-evidence to the idea that slaves escaped and were smuggled across America by white activists. Troy gives examples of slaves who escaped north without the aid of the Underground Railroad. He described how John Hedgeman was helped to freedom by black slaves and free people, who risked arrest for assisting those escaping north to Canada. [5]
Troy traveled to Britain to raise funds for his church, where he gave lectures to anti-slavery societies. He traveled with William M. Mitchell, and was mentioned in the latter's book. [6] Troy also traveled throughout Europe, Jamaica and Haiti. [7]
In 1866 Troy relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where he spent nine months preaching and giving lectures. In 1867 he accepted a call to become the pastor of Richmond's Second Baptist Church. He resigned his pastorate in 1874 to found the Moore Street Industrial and Mission School and the Moore Street Baptist Church. On Sunday, October 10, 1875 Rev. Troy assisted Rev. Robert S. Laws in laying the cornerstone of Mount Zion Baptist Church (Arlington, Virginia), a church founded in Freedman's Village. [8] In 1880 Troy was again called to be pastor of the Second Baptist Church, which calling he later resigned to found the Sharon Baptist Church. [7]
William Troy was married to Sidney Blackburn on 18 October 1847 in Essex County, Virginia. [9] When William died he was survived by Sidney and six children; Mrs. Annie Walker of Camden, New Jersey, Mrs. Fannie E. Oliver of Richmond, Virginia, Dr. William Troy of Franklin, Virginia, Joshua W. Troy, Mrs. Nannie Walker and one other son, of Newport News, Virginia. At the end of his life Troy resided with his daughter Annie in Camden. He suffered from paralysis and Bright's disease which led to his death on 17 November 1905 in Camden, New Jersey. [7]
William Still was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the American Civil War, Still was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, named the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia. He directly aided fugitive slaves and also kept records of the people served in order to help families reunite.
Lott Cary was an African-American Baptist minister and lay physician who was a missionary leader in the founding of the colony of Liberia on the west coast of Africa in the 1820s. He founded the first Baptist church there in 1822, now known as Providence Baptist Church of Monrovia. He served as the colony's acting governor from August 1828 to his death in November of that year.
John William Dunjee was an American missionary, educator, Baptist minister, publisher, agent of Storer College and founder of Baptist churches across the United States.
George Liele was an African American and emancipated slave who became the founding pastor of First Bryan Baptist Church and First African Baptist Church, in Savannah, Georgia (USA). He later would become a missionary to Jamaica.
Leonard Black was born a slave in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was separated from his family by the age of six. He escaped after 20 years of slavery. In 1847 he wrote The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black: A Fugitive from Slavery. With encouragement and support, he became a Baptist minister, preaching in Boston, Providence, and Nantucket before becoming minister of First Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia.
David George was an African-American Baptist preacher and a Black Loyalist from the American South who escaped to British lines in Savannah, Georgia; later he accepted transport to Nova Scotia and land there. He eventually resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone where he would eventually die. With other slaves, George founded the Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1775, the first black congregation in the present-day United States. He was later affiliated with the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia. After migration, he founded Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. George wrote an account of his life that is one of the most important early slave narratives.
First Baptist Church was the first Baptist church in Petersburg, Virginia; one of the first African-American Baptist congregations in the United States, and one of the oldest black churches in the nation. It established one of the first local schools for black children in the nation.
Peter Durrett was a Baptist preacher and slave, who with his wife founded the First African Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky by 1790. By his death, the congregation totaled nearly 300 persons. It is the first black congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains, the first black Baptist congregation in Kentucky, and the third oldest black congregation in the United States. Its historic church was built in 1856, under the third pastor, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The First African Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia is a prominent Black church. Founded in 1841, its members initially included both slaves and freedmen. It has since had a major influence on the local black community. At one point, it was one of the largest Protestant churches in the United States.
Leonard Andrew Grimes was an African-American abolitionist and pastor. He served as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, including his efforts to free fugitive slave Anthony Burns captured in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. After the Civil War began, Grimes petitioned for African-American enlistment. He then recruited soldiers for the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
John Berry Meachum (1789–1854) was an American pastor, businessman, educator and founder of the First African Baptist Church in St. Louis, the oldest black church west of the Mississippi River. At a time when it was illegal in the city to teach people of color to read and write, Meachum operated a school in the church's basement. Meachum also circumvented a Missouri state law banning education for black people by creating the Floating Freedom School on a steamboat on the Mississippi River.
John Jasper was an ex-slave who became a Baptist minister and noted public speaker for Christianity after the American Civil War.
Edmund Kelly was the first African-American Baptist minister ordained in Tennessee. He escaped slavery in the 1840s to New England and returned after the US Civil War. He worked as a preacher and teacher in Columbia, Tennessee and was a frequent participant in national Baptist Conventions.
George DeBaptiste was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. Born free in Virginia, he moved as a young man to the free state of Indiana. In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state. In the 1830s and 1840s DeBaptiste was an active conductor in Madison, Indiana. Located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, this town was a destination for refugee slaves seeking escape from slavery.
James H. Holmes was a Baptist minister in Richmond, Virginia. As pastor of Richmond's First African Baptist Church, he was the leader of one of the largest churches in the country.
Reverend Romulus Moore was a politician and leader of the early civil rights movement after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era in the U.S. state of Georgia. An African American, Moore was elected to the state legislature in 1868. Moore was expelled from the legislature in 1868 along with other African Americans and reinstated in the Georgia General Assembly in 1870 by an Act of Congress. Reverend Moore was active in advocating the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Matthew or Madison Campbell was a Baptist preacher in Richmond, Kentucky. He was a local religious and political leader and helped organize a number of churches.
Peter Fossett was an enslaved laborer at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation, who after he attained his freedom in the mid-1800s, settled in Cincinnati where he established himself as a minister and caterer. He was a captain in the Black Brigade of Cincinnati during the Civil War. Fossett was an activist for education and prison reform. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. His remembrances, Once the slave of Thomas Jefferson, were published in 1898.
Peter Randolph was an African-American minister and abolitionist. Born into slavery in Virginia, he was freed in the will of his owner but this request took three years and legal proceedings to be honored. Randolph moved to Boston after being freed, where he became a pastor. He spent four years in Richmond, Virginia, after the end of the Civil War, before moving back to Boston. Randolph published an autobiographical account of his life that went through several editions.
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