Moses Wilkinson

At the time of the American Revolution, Moses Wilkinson was an enslaved African American in Nansemond County, Virginia. He was both blind and lame, held by Mills Wilkinson.[3] After the Lord Governor in his Dunmore's Proclamation promised slaves of American rebels their freedom if they would join the British forces fighting in the American Revolutionary War, Wilkinson led a band of slaves to freedom in 1776. He reached New York City, which the British forces occupied for years during the war.[2][3] In New York, the self-appointed, illiterate, fiery Wesleyan Methodist preacher gathered together a congregation.[4]

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 and some 3,000 other Black Loyalists were transported aboard L'Abondance to Halifax in Nova Scotia;[4] he is listed with them in the Book of Negroes.[1] 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.[4]

By 1791, they were ready to consider alternatives. 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.[2] 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.[2]

The ships made landfall on 9 March 1792. Wilkinson established the first Methodist church in Settler Town.[5] 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.[4] 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.[4]

• Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2007
• Vincent Carretta (ed.), Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, 2004
• James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870, 1992
• Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, HarperCollins, 2006
• Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, Harvard University Press, 2001
• The Wesleyans. (Accessed February 2014)
• Susan Ware, Forgotten Heroes: Inspiring American Portraits From Our Leading Historians, The Free Press, 1998
• Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History