The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
In reaching this conclusion, moreover, we have been not a little
influenced by the fact that when Henry Francis was formerly ordained
to the ministry at Savannah, Georgia, seventeen years after he had
commenced to preach, and when he was an officer in the Negro church at
Savannah, the ordination sermon was not preached by Dr. Henry
Holcombe, of the white church of that city, nor by Andrew Bryan of the
First African, but by Jesse Peter,[40] pastor of the Silver Bluff
Church. We can account for the deference shown Jesse Peter, on this
occasion, only on the presumption that Henry Francis was converted,
baptized, and licensed to preach at Silver Bluff, and that Jesse Peter
was the instrument used in bringing these results to pass. It is
evident, then, that the Ogeeche African Baptist Church,[41] on the
Ogeeche River, fourteen miles south of Savannah, organized in the year
1803, is more indebted to the Silver Bluff Church for her first
preacher and instructor of youth than to any other church.
Of Jesse Peter's ministry at Silver Bluff, as a resident pastor, we
are not well informed. In a letter written from Kiokee, Georgia, May
1, 1793, Abraham Marshall speaks of him as follows: "I am intimately
acquainted with Jesse Golfin; he lives thirty miles below me in South
Carolina, and twelve miles below Augusta. He is a Negro servant of Mr.
Golfin, who, to his praise be it spoken, treats him with respect."[42]
Jesse Peter, then, was resident pastor of the Silver Bluff Church in
the early spring of 1793. From another source we learn that the
membership of the Silver Bluff Church, at this time, was sixty or
more.[43]
THE CHURCH AT AUGUSTA
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