rst stage in its history. At that
time Rev. David George, the pastor, and about forty other slaves, whom
George Galphin had abandoned in his flight, went to Savannah, to find
safety and freedom under the British flag. Later David George returned
to South Carolina, and abode for a time in the city of Charleston.
Thence, in 1782, he sailed to Nova Scotia, in company with not less
than five hundred white persons, who were adherents of the British
cause. In Nova Scotia he abode ten years, preaching to the people of
his own race who had found their way into that portion of the
continent, in large numbers, after abandoning their homes in the
United States.

These labors were performed amid hardships and persecutions, but in
faithfulness to God and suffering humanity. In prosecuting his
mission, he preached in Shelburn, Birchtown, Ragged Island, and in St.
Johns, New Brunswick. So pronounced was the opposition to his labors
in New Brunswick, that he found it necessary to invoke the protection
of the civil authorities. How well he succeeded in doing so, may be
imagined from the subjoined statement:

"Secretary's Office, Fredericktown, 17th July, 1792, I do hereby
certify that David George, a free Negro man, has permission from
his Excellency, the Lieutenant Governor, to instruct the Black
people in knowledge, and exhort them to the practice of the
Christian religion. Jno. Odell, Secretary."[24]

It should excite in us no surprise that David George was opposed in
his labors in his new home, for, as Lorenzo Sabine declares, "the
original population of this Colony was composed almost entirely of the
Loyalists of the Revolution."[25] They had not changed their views in
regard to the rights of Negroes, by being removed from a land where
the two races had hitherto sustained the relation of master and slave.
The real surprise lies in the fact, that the secretary of the province
was himself a preacher, a minister of the Episcopal Church, and a
former resident of the State of New Jersey.

So effective were the arduous labors of David George that he is
enrolled among the pulpit pioneers, in Bill's history of Canadian
Baptists. He was certainly first to plant a Baptist church at
Shelburn, as well as a number of feeble beginnings elsewhere. But
Canada was only a temporary home to David George, and to others from
the States. Accordingly, he took a colony of Negroes to Sierra Leone,
British Central Africa, in 17