The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
History
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
We visited also the infant school, established but two weeks previous.
Mr. S. the teacher, who has been for many years an instructor, says he
finds them as apt to learn as any children he ever taught. He said he
was surprised to see how soon the instructions of the school-room were
carried to the homes of the children, and caught up by their parents.
The very first night after the school closed, in passing through the
streets, he heard the children repeating what they had been taught, and
the parents learning the songs from their children's lips Mr. S. has a
hundred children already in his school, and additions were making daily.
He found among the negro parents much interest in the school.
WESLEYAN MISSIONARIES.
We called on the Rev. Mr. Fidler, the superintendent of the Wesleyan
missions in Barbadoes. Mr. F. resides in Bridgetown, and preaches mostly
in the chapel in town. He has been in the West Indies twelve years, and
in Barbadoes about two years. Mr. F. informed us that there were three
Wesleyan missionaries in the island, besides four or five local
preachers, one of whom is a black man. There are about one thousand
members belonging to their body, the greater part of whom live in town.
Two hundred and thirty-five were added during the year 1836, being by
far the largest number added in any one year since they began their
operations in the island.
A brief review of the history of the Wesleyan Methodists in Barbadoes,
will serve to show the great change which has been taking place in
public sentiment respecting the labors of missionaries. In the year
1823, not long after the establishment of the Wesleyan church in the
island, the chapel in Bridgetown was destroyed by a mob. Not one stone
was left upon another. They carried the fragments for miles away from
the site, and scattered them about in every direction, so that the
chapel might never be rebuilt. Some of the instigators and chief actors
in this outrage, were "gentlemen of property and standing," residents of
Bridgetown. The first morning after the outrage began, the mob sought
for the Rev. Mr. Shrewsbury, the missionary, threatening his life, and
he was obliged to flee precipitately from the island, with his wife. He
was hunted like a wild beast, and it is thought that he would have been
torn in pieces if he had been found. Not an effort or a movement was
made to quell the mob, during their assault upon the chapel. The first
men of the island connived at the violence--secretly rejoicing in what
they supposed would be the extermination of Methodism from the country.
The governor, Sir Henry Ward, utterly refused to interfere, and would
not suffer the militia to repair to the spot, though a mere handful of
soldiers could have instantaneously routed the whole assemblage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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