In his struggle to obtain Joan's freedom John Rogers was jailed from September
25th, 1711 until March 25th of the following year. He had aided and abetted
John Jackson, a freedman in the abduction of Joan, his wife, from Samuel Beebe,
who claimed that he had inherited her from his mother in law, James Rogers'
wife. Incidentally, Mary, Samuel's mother, was none other than the daughter of
William Keeney, once master of the Hopewell, a ship which had been one third
owned by Sebastian Keene, a free black from Massachusetts who later moved to
Virginia.
Again, why the Rogers history could be such an important one is the fact that,
except for the scant references to them in the few local histories of New
London, Connecticut or the genealogies published (usually privately) by their
descendants, scholars in African American history seem totally unaware of the
landmark efforts of this family against slavery. The reason being, more than
likely, that since the authors of what precious little had been written were
white, they were more taken by the stance this group had so defiantly taken,
not only against religious orthodoxy, but against government authority, as
well.
The mulatto, Adam Rogers, wed Katherine Jones, a white, in 1702. Interestingly
enough, Katherine had already borne a child out of wedlock for the John Jackson
mentioned above. Her sister married Isaac Fox, a friend of the Rogers clan.
In turn, a son of theirs married his first cousin, one of Adam's daughters.
Ironically, two of Adam's great grandchildren would marry into the Beebe
family, the same with which Adam's father had fought so relentlessly to obtain
the freedom of Joan.
For the time being, however, it is the line from Adam, through his daughter,
Katherine that has proven so historically rich. According to some writers, her
husband, James Merritt, was of Huguenot parentage.
It was probably this French background which, in turn, contributed to their
daughter, Esther's marriage to Pierre Geignard who was no less a personage than
the brother of the governor of "Hispaniola", present day Haiti. According to
one tradition, Peter Ganyard (as his name was anglicized) apprenticed himself
to a cobbler in 1753; married and then for several years lived with his brother
from whom he later inherited $3,000 in gold. Another tradition has Peter in
Maryland, studying to be a priest, then in Boston where he met a Miss Merritt
of Puritan ancestry. If these family stories are correct, then three of Esther
and Peter's nine children were actually born in Haiti. As I've mentioned
earlier, it was their horror at the slave system they encountered there that
sent them packing back to Connecticut. Considering the political power that
has for so long been vested in the hands of Haiti's coloured elites, I cannot
help but wonder how typical or representative an example the Geignard
experience might have been to the racial history of the island.
It is one of Esther's brothers, James, who was the father of Timothy Merritt,
the Methodist Abolitonist I've flagged to you. Born October 12th, 1775, he
became a prominent minister who received postings throughout the North East.
Although the two biographical sketches are fairly detailed, they did not cover his abolitonist activities adequately enough. Will try to compensate for that below.
Nineteenth century abolitionism encompassed a much wider range of effort than
we might have appreciated. Indeed,the Garrisonian model which we take for
granted was the order of the day, only emerged after an enormous struggle
between various camps of anti-slavery sentiment. Not only because Merritt's was
the largest religious denomination in the country at the time, but because as
such it so accurately reflected the social attitudes of millions of Americans,
that a look at how the Methodist Church confronted this moral issue is worth
our while. Furthermore, Methodism provided a structure of conferences where
ministers met to decide matters for rather large geographical areas. Since
this system lent itself more easily to agitation than did the loose-knit
congregationally governed churches, Methodist conference records reveal much
more about the development of the movement. However, since this is not a
documentary on Methodism and slavery, I'll try to be brief. In its attempt to
accommodate Southern ideas on this peculiar institution, a whole range of
compromises had been accepted by the Church. At the most liberal end of the
spectrum was the political belief that what Immediatists like Garrison pushed
for would prove politically destructive to the country. The conservative
extreme was clearly articulated in the General Conference of 1840 which,
besides instituting church regulations that complied with the laws of the slave
states, declared that "the simple holding of slaves in the States where the
laws do not admit of emancipation constitutes no legal barrier to the election
or ordination of ministers..." The Conference quite definitively stated, as
well, that "Slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil."
The New England Church, on the other hand, had, as early as 1835, formed it own
New England Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Society. Initially working together with
Garrison and his associates were three of the most vociferous Methodist
abolitionist activists, Storrs, Scott and Sunderland. As the editor of
Zion's Herald, Timothy Merritt was the propagator in print of their
ideology and in this position, therefore, and because of his age, one of the
most respected of New England's Anti-Slavery stalwarts. At the Lowell
Anti-Slavery Convention in 1838, for instance, Merritt was elected vice
president.
The frustration caused by the conservatism in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of
all denominations led many abolitionists to begin repudiating organized
religion. Soon Garrison was calling for all true anti-slavery men to "come out"
from "hyprocritical" churches that were tainted with the sin of slavery.
However, as a concomitant to this approach, he also began to push theories of
"no human government" which insisted that only God could rule and that civil
government should therefore be ignored. Such a stance was, of course, too much
for most abolitionist of any religious orthodoxy. The Methodists reply to
Garrison was that the way to destroy salvery was not to create chaos by
repudiating human laws, but to reform the existing government by voting for men
who would abolish the laws that upheld racial servitude. The Lowell Convention
at which Merrit presided, was in fact called to try to counter the course
Garrison had taken. As the editor of Zion's Herald, Merrit ironically
became an opponent of the Liberator's editor.
It would be interesting to know what Timothy Merrit thought of himself
racially. From the show's point of view it is an important question since even
with the abolitionists, by this point in time, "amalgamation" or racial
intermarriage, had become a taboo. One of the more conservative Methodist
ministers, for instance, felt confident that he could get the better of
Garrison by accusing him of being a proponent of racial amalgamation. Perhaps
even more telling, though, is that Garrison denied it categorically, pointing
out that he neither advocated nor opposed marriage between the races. The
charge, he went on, had been levelled "to exploit hostility to us and our
cause" a "wicked subterfuge, worthy of fiends but utterly disgraceful to
human beings." All the more telling was the accusation by another
conservative that proof of the abolitionists' amalgamationist intentions could
be seen in their desire to have children educated "without regard to
complexion."
To provide you with a little more in depth look at the complexity of the
abolionist movement in New England up until Timothy Merrit died in 1845, have
xeroxed a few pages from "History of the New England Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, 1796-1910" by James Mudge. Should you need more I
also have a copy here in the office of "Slavery and Methodism" by Donald
Matthews.
