Anglican Baptisms of People of African Descent in Barbados, 1651-1800

Dataset CreatorsMatthew Blake Strickland, University of FloridaContributorsLayla HublerAlexander Peterson“Anglican Baptisms of People of African Descent in Barbados, 1651-1800” is a dataset that includes records of 4,825 people of color who were baptized in the Church of England in colonial Barbados. The dataset begins in 1651, marking the first recorded baptism of 'a negro,” a man named Lazarus in Christ Church Parish. The dataset extends to the year 1800, ending before the dramatic shifts in the nineteenth century, such as the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, amelioration in the 1820s, and eventual emancipation in the 1830s. The eighteenth century represents the peak of the institution of slavery in the British Atlantic world, with an estimated 364,116 enslaved Africans disembarking in Barbados between 1701 and 1800, according to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database.1 Therefore, 1800 serves as a significant endpoint for this crucial century in the history of slavery. There are, of course, thousands of baptisms that followed between 1801 and the end of slavery in 1834. However, this end date reflects a focus on the highpoint of the slave trade to Barbados.In this article, I provide a cursory look at how the dataset was created, initial data points drawn from the contents, and guidance on how researchers might use this dataset for further study; readers should consider this article and the accompanying dataset a launch pad for exploring a variety of topics related to religion in the British Atlantic. I suspect that some of my initial conclusions will hold up while others will be revised through the more nuanced interpretations of future researchers. Ultimately, this article offers descriptive findings rather than deep interpretive synthesis.Thirteen Anglican baptismal registries from eight parishes in colonial Barbados record the baptisms of both white and non-white people up to 1800. Some registries are more complete than others. For example, the records for St. Michael Parish appear to be relatively intact, whereas others are missing significant portions due to poor record keeping or deterioration caused by the tropical environment. No baptismal registries survive for St. Andrew, St. John, or St. George. However, there are eighty-six enslaved people represented in the dataset for St. John Parish because their baptisms were recorded on the Codrington Estates, two sugar plantations owned by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) from 1711 to the end of slavery.The Barbados Department of Archives houses the original registries. In 1983, the Genealogical Society of Utah photographed the registers and made them available on thirty-eight microfilm reels. These reels have since been digitized and are now accessible online through FamilySearch, allowing remote access to these historical documents and facilitating the creation of this dataset. Joanne McRee Sanders also published a printed volume containing all thirteen baptismal registries for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.2The dataset adds depth to the study of slavery and religion in the British Americas. Although much scholarship has explored the role of Anglican Christianity in the lives of both free and enslaved people, this dataset offers details that are often absent from other sources, such as treatises, sermons, or letters.3 By focusing closely on individual entries, the dataset reveals who among the non-white population in Barbados participated in the sacrament of baptism in the Church of England and thereby contributes to a greater understanding of the intersection of race and religion in Barbadian colonial society. These details include the roles of gender, race, and age of people who are being baptized. Understanding these aspects can tell us more about patterns of participation in the rite.The baptismal records show 2,634 (56%) of the baptized individuals were female and 2,093 (44%) were male. The gender of 98 people remains unknown and they are excluded from these statistics. When the dataset is adjusted to only include people labeled “adult” in the register or are assumed to be adult based on their age of fifteen years old or older—the standard used for Enslaved.org—women account for 558 (63%), men for 326 (37%), and 8 remain unknown.We see similar trends in Jamaica. In that colony, Anglican baptisms of women made up around 56% of the total, and baptisms of men made up of 44%.4 When only adults are considered, we again see a close pairing between both colonies where women dominated, with 66% of the total and men only 34%. The close correspondence between Barbados and Jamaica strengthens the broader pattern of women participating in baptism and, to some extent, engaging with Anglicanism.These numbers in both Barbados and Jamaica align closely with the work of other historians of the Protestant Americas. Jon Sensbach finds that women “made up 60 percent” of a Moravian congregation in 1740 in St. Thomas.5 Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood argue that women held more than half of the memberships in Protestant churches, often reaching between 60 and 65 percent.6 Jon Butler similarly notes, “Women made up the majority of members in most New England established churches in the 1680s. By the 1720s women dominated membership in virtually all known New England congregations.”7 Although Anglicanism, Moravianism, New England Congregationalism, and Quakerism differed in their theology of “spiritual equality,” this evidence from Barbados suggests that non-white women engaged Protestant institutions at higher rates across several denominations. I leave a comprehensive comparative study to future scholars, but this dataset offers a foundation for examining gender and Protestantism across the British Atlantic.The dataset records 2,988 (66%) people enslaved at the time of baptism and 1,522 (34%) as free. Another 315 entries have an unknown condition of servitude. The parish registers also categorize people into three primary racial designations: Negro/Black (1,975), Mulatto (2,313), and Colored (62). One person was described as having “yellow skin,” and 474 had an ambiguous or unknown racial category. Those labeled “Colored” were most likely of mixed-race ancestry. The “Mulatto” designation in Barbados also encompasses what would have been Mulatto, Quadroon, Mestee, and other labels connected to individuals with African and European ancestry. If we take these categories at face value, which should be done with caution and acknowledgment of its limitations, and only analyze those entries with a known racial category, it would seem that 54% had white ancestry and 46% did not. These figures highlight how racial mixture shaped participation in Anglican baptism.Proximity to whiteness often contributed to one's engagement—which could have been very little or a lot—with the Church of England. Indeed, Hilary Beckles states that freed people “found that baptism opened the door to marriage in church and attendant improvements in their social position.”8 Baptism became a way for free Black or mulatto people to gain privileges and separate themselves from enslaved people. Jerome Handler notes that by 1829-30, the proportion of freedmen attending Anglican services closely matched their population in Barbados. They accounted for around 25.5% of the island's population and roughly 23% percent of attendees in the island's Anglican churches. St. Michael and Bridgetown contained 61% of freedmen, and 72% of freedmen in attendance in Anglican churches did so in St. Michael Parish.9 Handler's examination of freedmen points to the centrality of St. Michael and Bridgetown in shaping the religious lives of free people of African descent. Pedro Welch argued that “in the church, as in the wider society, freedmen suffered the discriminations prevalent in a society which viewed any taint of African ancestry as a badge of inferiority.” Furthermore, “the freedmen viewed membership in the church as an important signature of their 'free' status. It further separated them from their slave kin. To emphasise their association with the church, therefore, was to strengthen their claim to the rights of freemen.”10 Baptism became a way for free Black or mulatto people to gain privileges and separate themselves from enslaved people. Handler's figures represent the last years of slavery, and Welch's comment is an analysis of freedmen petitions in 1811. The first Anglican baptism of a free mulatto person was in January 1675.11 The conclusions drawn by Welch and Handler are likely more relevant for an earlier period than the nineteenth or late eighteenth centuries.The data briefly presented here helps show that Anglican baptismal practices in Barbados were shaped by the intersection of race, gender, and condition of servitude within the colonial order. The data, however, cannot fully explain the motivations behind these patterns. That around two-thirds of adults represented in the baptismal registers were women suggests many possibilities. Did the Church of England provide an avenue for spirituality and social recognition among women of African descent, even if to a limited extent? To what extent can we understand an individual's reasons for being baptized? How did women of color living near enslavers as domestics, sexual partners, or nurses connect to baptismal trends? Were there instances of forced baptism of female sexual partners by white enslavers when also baptizing their mixed-race children? I do not answer these questions here, but future scholars can use this dataset to pursue them in depth.The value of ecclesiastical sources like these is best shown by Jenny Shaw and her use of the baptismal records as an introduction to Elizabeth and Susannah, two “mulatto” women belonging to John Peers, and the children they had by him. The baptismal entries provided the perceived race or skin color of the women, their condition of servitude, and the attributed ages of their children.12 Combining the baptismal registers with bits of information from “disparate archives” has allowed Shaw to trace these women and their families across the Atlantic between Barbados and Britain.13Future researchers may also use this dataset to examine non-white enslavers. Christine Walker, has examined, for example, how women of European and African descent perpetuated chattel slavery in Jamaica through her study of wills.14 Kathleen Monteith has also started this work with her research on Frances King, a free woman of color who owned hundreds of enslaved women in Jamaica.15 In this baptismal dataset for Barbados, there are seventy entries of enslaved people belonging to thirty-nine different enslavers who were described as “mulatto.” Elizabeth Harte, “a free mulatto woman,” had four enslaved people baptized in St. Michael Parish in the 1760s and 1770s.16 Rachael Polgreen, a “free mulatto” in St. Michael, had six individuals baptized, the most of any woman enslaver of color.17 Of the thirty-nine reportedly mulatto enslavers, thirty-seven (95%) were female and only 2 (5%) were male. This speaks directly to sexual relationships that sometimes resulted in mixed-race children inheriting property. These situations also complicate familial relationships. In the Barbados register, on August 9, 1782, Elizabeth and Susanna Lund were baptized. The register described Elizabeth as “a free woman and slaveowner,” and Susanna as “Mother of Elizabeth Lund and her property.”18 We can surmise that Elizabeth was likely the result of a sexual relationship between a white enslaver and Susanna. Elizabeth possibly inherited enslaved people, including her own mother, when her white father died. These types of complicated relationships are worth deeper examination to add to our understanding of slavery in the British Caribbean.There are twenty entries of enslaved people belonging to thirteen different enslavers who were described as “free negro.” Seven (54%) of these people were female and six (46%) were male. Thomas Griffith, for example, had three enslaved people baptized on December 31, 1800. All of them carried the description “negro slave, the property of Thomas Griffith, a free negro.”19 It is probably unsurprising that all but three of these ninety entries were recorded in St. Michael parish, the location of Bridgetown. This lends itself to an examination of urban and rural distinctions. Pedro Welch argues that “many coloureds saw the possession of slaves as a legitimate, even desirable, enterprise.”20 Much of Welch's analysis focuses on later decades, beginning in the 1790s and extending into the nineteenth century. This dataset's first entry of an enslaved person owned by a free mulatto woman was in 1768. There may be an opportunity to push this topic back into an earlier period.The dataset also sheds light on Anglican ministers who owned enslaved people. Historians Travis Glasson, Katharine Gerbner, Syvia Frey, and Betty Wood have closely examined the role of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in upholding Atlantic slavery.21 Although Church of England officials were not monolithic in their beliefs, the baptismal registers reveal the extent of ministerial slaveholding. The dataset contains 111 entries of enslaved people belonging to sixteen Anglican ministers in the eighteenth century. Sixty-eight of those individuals belonged to Henry Evans Holder, the rector of St. Joseph Parish in the 1780s and 1790s.22 This was the same Rev. Holder who wrote a treatise defending the institution of slavery in 1788 and published a pro-slavery poem in 1792.23 It is not surprising that Holder actively engaged in a war of words against the abolition movement since so much of his wealth depended on the enslavement of people of African descent. This is an example of the baptismal registers contextualizing a treatise. We have seen such work for the nineteenth century in Barbados, where almost all Anglican parish rectors between 1800 and 1834 were enslavers.24 It would be interesting to see how this information in this dataset could be used in a history of Protestantism and slavery in the Atlantic, similar to Glasson's Mastering Christianity and Gerbner's Christian Slavery. Indeed, Gerbner opens her book with a vignette of Lazarus, the first baptismal entry for all of Barbados in November 1651. His baptism, Gerbner argues, “challenged the emerging culture of slavery in the Protestant Atlantic world.”25 Gerbner also uses the baptismal registers to show how a growing population of free people of color were engaging with the Church of England, leading to firmer distinctions based on race rather than whiteness. She specifically states that, “While Christianity still functioned as an indicator of ethnic difference, it was gradually replaced by the phenotypic term ‘white.’”26 When we consider nearly 5,000 similar baptisms to Lazarus's, what conclusions can we draw and how can we expand our understanding of tensions within Anglican Christianity regarding enslaved people, free people of African descent, and the institution of slavery? Gerbner ends her analysis within the first half of the eighteenth century, but what conclusions can we draw about race and Anglicanism in Barbados and the wider British Caribbean in an examination of these baptismal registers?The opportunity to further investigate the religious practices of African-descended people and similar research makes possible more precise analysis and examination of the relationship between slavery and religion. This dataset will be valuable to a diverse range of scholars, genealogists, and educators. As I have laid out in some detail above, historians specializing in the Atlantic World, Caribbean studies, and the history of slavery will find the dataset particularly useful for exploring the intersection of race, religion, colonial society, and any of the topics I briefly broached above. This dataset offers details that can enhance our understanding of the lived experiences of non-white people in colonial Barbados, particularly in relation to their participation in the Church of England.Such statistical analysis has already been previously undertaken for colonial Jamaica.27 That particular dataset has more than 21,000 baptismal entries. Researchers will find interesting connections between Barbados and Jamaica while noting stark differences as well. Future research in this area should do a couple of the baptismal entries from 1801 to 1834 should be and a comparative analysis of both colonies from the seventeenth century to the end of slavery in the British in 1834 can be There are for and other British colonies that should be and examined in a similar way so that our focus is not on the two slave in the British By the relationship between the Church of England and gender, race, and may a little the allowed for in this not for a examination of Barbados in a comparative analysis with the other and historians will also from this those ancestry in the The of and information for and understanding the historical of their Furthermore, the dataset's records on skin and into the social and of which can understand how their the of race and in a slave society. Indeed, the the of the historical the Codrington to the of enslaved people on those sugar plantations in Barbados. The in this dataset of eighty-six enslaved people owned by the could be an important their in more about their and their dataset opens up for future might investigate the role of religion in the of social among non-white people in colonial Barbados, particularly how baptism might have been used as a for or social status. researchers could the of racial in the parish examining how these the lived experiences of non-white people. this dataset could on the of Anglicanism in Barbados, to broader on the of colonial religious practices on Caribbean or Department of St. Barbados Christ Church Barbados, and Joseph Barbados, Barbados, Michael Barbados, and Michael Barbados, and Michael Barbados, and Michael Barbados, and Michael Barbados, and Michael Barbados, and Barbados, and Barbados, Thomas Barbados, available on FamilySearch, of the Society for the Propagation of the University of of that is on the and is the of the of to the Society now on the of to the Society now on the of All the that are and not now on the in November for the I the digitized parish registries through I examined nearly entries across more than in the thirteen baptismal registries and all entries that specifically people of African descent. 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The to include both a and a that the dataset is both and all information for researchers to trace the original Furthermore, the for can be for greater to find