remembered their early leader as one "clear in the grand
doctrines of the Gospel, truly pious, and the instrument of doing more
good among the poor slaves than all the learned doctors in America."

[Footnote 1: Walter H. Brooks: _The Silver Bluff Church_.]

[Footnote 2: See letters in Journal of Negro History, January, 1916,
69-97.]

While Bryan was working in Savannah, in Richmond, Va., rose Lott Cary, a
man of massive and erect frame and of great personality. Born a slave in
1780, Cary worked for a number of years in a tobacco factory, leading a
wicked life. Converted in 1807, he made rapid advance in education and
he was licensed as a Baptist preacher. He purchased his own freedom
and that of his children (his first wife having died), organized a
missionary society, and then in 1821 himself went as a missionary to the
new colony of Liberia, in whose interest he worked heroically until his
death in 1828.

More clearly defined than the origin of Negro Baptist churches are
the beginnings of African Methodism. Almost from the time of its
introduction in the country Methodism made converts among the Negroes
and in 1786 there were nearly two thousand Negroes in the regular
churches of the denomination, which, like the Baptist denomination, it
must be remembered, was before the Revolution largely overshadowed
in official circles by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The general
embarrassment of the Episcopal Church in America in connection with the
war, and the departure of many loyalist ministers, gave opportunity to
other denominations as well as to certain bodies of Negroes. The white
members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia,
however, determined to set apart its Negro membership and to segregate
it in the gallery. Then in 1787 came a day when the Negroes, choosing
not to be insulted, and led by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, left the
edifice, and with these two men as overseers on April 17 organized
the Free African Society. This was intended to be "without regard to
religious tenets," the members being banded together "to support one
another in sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless
children." The society was in the strictest sense fraternal, there being
only eight charter members: Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, Samuel Boston,
Joseph Johnson, Cato Freeman, Caesar Cranchell, James Potter, and William
White. By 1790 the society had on deposit in the Bank of North America