Another dispensation of Providence has much strengthened our hands, and increased our means of information; Henry Francis, lately a slave to the widow of the late Colonel Leroy Hammond, of Augusta, has been purchased by a few humane gentlemen of this place, and liberated to exercise the handsome ministerial gifts he possesses amongst us, and teach our youth to read and write. He is a strong man about forty-nine years of age, whose mother was white and whose father was an Indian. His wife and only son are slaves. Brother Francis has been in the ministry fifteen years, and will soon receive ordination, and will probably become the pastor of a branch of my large church, which is getting too unwieldy for one body. Should this event take place, and his charge receive constitution, it will take the rank and title of the 3rd Baptist Church in Savannah. With the most sincere and ardent prayers to God for your temporal and eternal welfare, and with the most unfeigned gratitude, I remain, reverend and dear sir, your obliged servant in the gospel. (Signed) Andrew Bryan. P.S. I should be glad that my African friends could hear the above account of my affairs. --_The Baptist Annual Register_, 1798-1801, page 366. STATE OF THE NEGROES IN JAMAICA Kingston, Jamaica, 1st May, 1802. _Rev. and Dear Sir_, Since our blessed Lord has been pleased to permit me to have the rule of a church of believers, I have baptized one hundred and eleven: and I have a sanction from the Rev. Dr. Thomas Rees, rector of this town and parish, who is one of the ministers appointed by his Majesty to hold an ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the clergy in this island, confirmed by a law passed by the Legislative Body of this island, made and provided for that purpose.