Born aslave near Charleston SC, and brutally treated by the carpenter to whom he was apprenticed at the age of 16, he escaped to the British forces occupying Charleston, survived a bout of smallpox and eventually reached New York. After the War of Independence he and his wife settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia. Both were converted and he became a WM preacher among the black settlers at Preston, near Halifax. In 1792 they sailed with other free blacks to the new settlement of Sierra Leone. To overcome his limitations as schoolteacher and preacher, in 1794 he was sent by the Sierra Leone Company to Kingswood School. He returned to Sierra Leone in 1796, but died in 1802 while ministering among the Sherbro people 100 miles south of Freetown. The autobiography he wrote while in England was published in the Methodist Magazine in 1798.

Entry written by: JAV
Category: Person
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