George, David (c. 1742-1810)

Early African American promoter of mission

With energy and dedication, George urged the importance of mission at a time when Protestant Christianity was far from committed to it and when the organizational basis for mission was virtually nonexistent. With indomitable will and a preparedness to take risk that was born of faith, he became leader of the outreach to Africa that opened a new chapter in the modern history of the continent.

George was born to slave parents on a plantation in Essex County, Virginia. At an early age he ran away but soon after passed into the hands of a new master in South Carolina. He converted to evangelical Christianity and became a colleague of the black preacher George Liele, a veteran missionary to Jamaica and the Bahamas. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, George joined the British side and in 1782 was demobilized with other black loyalists to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he continued his preaching activity. He impressed the British authorities with his leadership qualities, and he was appointed a leader of an expedition to repatriate the black loyalists to West Africa. They made landfall in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in March 1792, the commencement of what the English evangelical cause, led by William Wilberforce, termed “a Christian experiment.” It established in tropical Africa a bridgehead from where the trade in slaves could be attacked and the rest of the continent reached for the gospel.

In Freetown George combined the roles of preacher, community leader, official representative with the British authorities, humanitarian campaigner against the slave trade, and lightning rod for missionary awakening among Baptists in England, where he visited in 1793. He and William Carey were thus active at about the same time, though George by then had accumulated an abundance of field experience. By the time of George’s death in Freetown the cause was virtually assured–this was four years after the Williamstown (Massachusetts) Haystack Prayer Meeting, an event that lit the American missionary impulse. The success of the Sierra Leone “Christian experiment,” in which George’s hand was so prominent, led to the abolition of the slave trade and the peaceful, economic mobilization of Africa for commerce, civilization, and Christianity.

Lamin Sanneh, “George, David,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 238-9.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

Some of George’s letters from Sierra Leone appeared in the Baptist Annual Register 2 (1794–97): 94–96, 215–16, 255–56, 409–10.

Primary

George, David and John Rippon. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George, from Sierra Leone in Africa; Given by Himself in a Conversation with Brother Rippon of London, and Brother Pearce of Birmingham.” London: 1973. First published in the Baptist Annual Register 1 (1790-1793): 473–84.

Reprinted in “Face Zion Forward”: First Writers of the Black Atlantic, 1785-1798, edited by Joanna Brooks and John Saillant. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002; and…

In Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-speaking World of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Vincent Carretta. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Secondary

Bill, I. E. Fifty Years with the Baptist Ministers and Churches of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Saint John, NB: Barnes, 1880.

Brooks, W. H. The Silver Bluff Church: A History of Negro Baptist Churches in America. Washington, D.C.: Press of R. L. Pendleton, 1910.

_____. “The Priority of the Silver Bluff Church and Its Promoters.” Journal of Negro History 2 (1922): 172-96.

Clifford, Mary Louise. From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999.

Fyfe, Christopher. A History of Sierra Leone. [London]: Oxford University Press, 1962.

_____. “The Baptist Churches in Sierra Leone.” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion 2 (December 1963): 55-60.

Gordon, Grant. From Slavery to Freedom: The Life of David George, Pioneer Black Baptist Minister. Hantsport, NS: Published by Lancelot Press for Acadia Divinity College and the Baptist Historical Committee of the United Baptist Convention of the Atlantic Provinces, 1992.

Kirk-Green, Anthony. “David George: The Nova Scotian Experience.” Sierra Leone Studies 14 (1960): 93-120.

Oliver, A. Pearleen. A Brief History of the Colored Baptists of Nova Scotia, 1782-1953: In Commemoration of Centennial Celebrations of the African United Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Inc. . Halifax, NS: The Association, 1953.

Sanneh, Lamin O. “Prelude to African Christian Independency: The Afro-American Factor in African Christianity.” Harvard Theological Review 77 no. 1 (1984): 1-32.

_____. Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999; 2001.

Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. Toronto: Penguin Group, 2005; New York: Ecco, 2006.

Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Walker, James St. G. The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870. New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1976.

Walls, Andrew F. “The Nova Scotians and Their Religion.” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion 1 (1959): 19-31.

Winks, Robin W. The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1997.

Links

See another brief biography of George and a bibliography that includes the Zachary Macaulay papers in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online vol. 5 (1801-1820). University of Toronto, 2000.

See another brief biography of George at the website “Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People.”

George, David and John Rippon. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George, from Sierra Leone in Africa; Given by Himself in a Conversation with Brother Rippon of London, and Brother Pearce of Birmingham.” London: 1793.

Brooks, W. H. The Silver Bluff Church: A History of Negro Baptist Churches in America. Washington, D.C.: Press of R. L. Pendleton, 1910.