Moses Wilkinson

{{Short description|American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Moses Wilkinson

| other_names = Daddy Moses

Old Moses

| birth_date = 1746/47

| occupation = Wesleyan Methodist preacher

}}

Moses "Daddy Moses" Wilkinson or "Old Moses" (c. 1746/47{{cite web |url=https://novascotia.ca/archives/Africanns/BNresults.asp?Search=Moses+Wilkinson |title=African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition |website=novascotia.ca (official website of Nova Scotia)|date=20 April 2020 }} Wilkinson's entry in the Book of Negroes gives his age as 36.{{cite web |url=http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/essays/nash.html |title=Thomas Peters: Millwright and Deliverer |author=Gary B. Nash |author-link=Gary B. Nash }} – ?) was an American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist. His ministry combined Old Testament divination with African religious traditions such as conjuring and sorcery.{{Cite web |title=The Radical Methodist Congregation of Daddy Moses |url=http://www.blackloyalist.info/the-radical-methodist-congregation-of-daddy-moses/ |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=www.blackloyalist.info}} He gained freedom from slavery in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War and was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher in New York and Nova Scotia. In 1791, he migrated to Sierra Leone, preaching alongside ministers Boston King and Henry Beverhout.{{Cite journal |last=Schwarz |first=Suzanne |title='Our Mad Methodists': Abolitionism, Methodism and Missions in Sierra Leone in the Late Eighteenth Century |date=2011 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42909807 |journal=Wesley and Methodist Studies |volume=3 |pages=121–133 |doi=10.2307/42909807 |jstor=42909807 |issn=2291-1723|url-access=subscription }} There, he established the first Methodist church in Settler Town and survived a rebellion in 1800.

Early life

Circa 1746, Moses Wilkinson was born enslaved on a plantation in Nansemond County, Virginia. He was enslaved by Miles Wilkinson.{{cite book |last=Clifford |first=Mary Louise |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SJqMtJYTbDsC&pg=PA15 |title=From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution |date=January 2006 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=9780786425570 |pages=15–18}}

Wilkinson was blind and unable to walk without assistance, possibly due to surviving smallpox.{{cite web |title=The Radical Methodist Congregation of Daddy Moses |url=http://www.blackloyalist.info/the-radical-methodist-congregation-of-daddy-moses/ |website=blackloyalist.info}}{{Cite web |title=Saltwater Spirituals |url=https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/31239/scripts/ss.tei.html?sequence=58&isAllowed=y |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=dalspace.library.dal.ca}}

Self-liberation

The 1775 Dunmore's Proclamation promised slaves of American rebels their freedom if they would join the British forces fighting in the American Revolutionary War. The following year, Wilkinson led a band of slaves to freedom, also freeing himself. He reached New York City, which the British forces occupied for years during the war.

Ministry

= New York =

In New York, the self-appointed, illiterate Wesleyan Methodist preacher gathered together a congregation. He was "a very fiery preacher, so much that some who watched him feared for his health."

File:Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Shelburne, NS.png

= Nova Scotia =

When the British were defeated in 1783, they fulfilled their promise of freedom to thousands of former slaves, evacuating them to other colonies and England. Wilkinson joined some 3,000 other Black Loyalists in on L'Abondance to Halifax in Nova Scotia;{{Cite news |last=Stouffer |first=Allen P. |date= |title=Towards Community: Black Methodists in Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia |pages=1 |work=Historical Papers 2000: Canadian Society of Church History |url=http://www.stuartbarnard.com/csch-sche/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/2000-12-stouffer-article-1.pdf}} he is listed with them in the Book of Negroes. The largest Black Loyalist settlement in Nova Scotia was established in Birchtown, but the refugees found the climate and conditions harsh, and the Crown was slow to grant them land.

In the spring of 1784, Shelburne was visited by William Black, the province’s future Methodist leader. Shelburne reported preaching to 200 Blacks at Birchtown, sixty of whom were converted by Wilkinson. His first convert was Violet "Peggy" King, a self-liberated freedwoman from North Carolina, whom he had met on L'Abondance; she was married to Boston King.

In July 1786, Wilkinson and others organized a Methodist church with seventy-eight members, sixty-six of whom were black.

= Sierra Leone =

On 26 October 1791, 350 people gathered in Wilkinson's church to hear John Clarkson from England explain the Sierra Leone Company's plans to reestablish a colony in West Africa, in what is now Sierra Leone. The previous attempt in 1787 had failed and he was recruiting Black Loyalists who wanted to try creating their own settlement in Africa. Displeased with the cold climate and discrimination from the resident whites, who included Loyalist slaveholders, Wilkinson, members of his Methodist congregation, and many blacks of other congregations emigrated; some 1196 Nova Scotian Settlers set sail from Halifax on 15 January 1792.

The ships made landfall on March 9 1792. Wilkinson established the first Methodist church in Settler Town.{{cite news |title=Emmy Contenders: Join Louis Gossett Jr. of 'Book of Negroes' on Thursday |author=Glenn Whipp |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=May 6, 2015 |url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/emmys/la-et-st-lou-gossett-jr-book-of-negroes-20150506-story.html}} The officers of the Sierra Leone Company clashed with members of the independent-minded Christian denominations, and matters came to a head with a failed rebellion led by Methodists in 1800. Two Methodists were executed; a number of others, mostly Methodist, were exiled elsewhere in West Africa. Wilkinson's brand of Methodism lost favour in the colony.

Legacy

His ministry inspired Gowan Pamphlet,{{Cite web |title=Gowan Pamphlet |url=http://www.slaveryandremembrance.org/almanack/people/bios/biopam.cfm |access-date=October 26, 2022 |website=slaveryandremembrance.org |language=en}} minister and freedman who founded the Black Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia.Woodson, Carter G. The History of the Negro Church. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1921.{{Cite web |title=Gowan Pamphlet |url=https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/explore/nation-builders/gowan-pamphlet/ |access-date=October 26, 2022 |website=colonialwilliamsburg.org |language=en-US}}

As detailed above, Wilkinson's preaching led to the creation of the Black Methodist community of Halifax.{{Cite web |last=Archives |first=Nova Scotia |date=2020-04-20 |title=Nova Scotia Archives - African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition |url=https://archives.novascotia.ca/ |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=Nova Scotia Archives}}

See more

List of Black Loyalists