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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Elias Neau
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Sourcing reliable missionaries for an unpredictable and often financially untenable life on the fringes of imperial experimentation was not a simple procedure. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) created stringent bureaucratic processes for internal selection within the British Isles. Sometimes, however, they received recommendations from the peripheries as to viable and worthy men who should be considered for service and care. Elias Neau was a French Huguenot who had emigrated to New York and was a significant member of the emigrant French Protestant congregation established there. His care for the catechising and education of enslaved Africans attracted attention and he was recommended to the SPG in London as a viable candidate for missionary service. The incumbent Anglican vicar of his New York parish was uncertain, due to Neau’s allegedly poor English, and the fact that he was not a member of the Church of England. There was also significant tension with powerful English parishioners who were often unsympathetic to enslaved Africans, whose labour underwrote their social and financial power, being catechised in the Christian religion. <br /><br />As a naturalised English subject, Neau was captured by pirates and imprisoned in France as a Huguenot. He also experienced a lengthy period of enslavement due to his refusal to convert to Catholicism. The privation he endured almost broke him. But he survived and managed to return to his family in New York. This set of experiences shaped Neau in profound ways; he did not question the structure of slavery that underwrote his own financial security and social position, but he did not have any sympathy with slave owners who refused to facilitate the Christian catechising and education of the people they owned due to selfishness, indifference or fear. Empathy was powerful but limited in its capacity to engineer social change. It could even result in support of legislation that constrained the agency of enslaved Africans even further, as Neau discovered inadvertently, in his sedulous attempts to persuade slave owners to allow catechising in the Christian religion, on the grounds that conversion would not result in manumission.</p>
<p><strong>Bibliography</strong></p>
<p>Katherine Gerbner, <em>Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World</em> (Philadelphia, 2018).</p>
<p>Travis Glasson, <em>Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World</em> (Oxford, 2012).</p>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
AH/T003197/1: <a href="https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT003197%2F1">Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic (c. 1630-1720)</a>
Letter
Epistolary metadata adapted from EMLO for the USPG exhibition.
Sender
Sender of a letter
Elias Neau
Recipient
Recipient of a letter
John Chamberlayne (Secretary)
Origin
Origin of a letter
New York, USA
Destination
Destination of a letter
Petty France, London, UK
Diplomatic Transcription
Diplomatic transcription of letter from manuscript.
<p>[f.201]</p>
<p>New York 30 April</p>
<p>1706</p>
<p>Mr Chamberlayne</p>
<p>Honor’d Sr.<br />I had the honor to write to you about two months ago by the Reverend Mr Evans Min[iste]r of Philadelphia, who went for London by the way of Virginia, & as I impose upon my self a duty of giving you an Account of what I do in my Office of Catechist, I take the Liberty to tell you again Sr, that my L[or]d Cornbury has given me my Lord of London's Licence, after having taken all the Oaths before him, and that I continue to Catechise all the Slaves that are sent to me, Mr Vesey has baptiz’d some <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">without the</span> against the Will and without the knowledge of their Masters, because they <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">are afraid</span> \fear/ <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">that</span> \lest/ by baptism they should become \temporally/ free, <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">we </span> \both Mr Vesey & I/ have said all we could on that Subject, to encourage their Masters, especially the Dutch and French, but we cannot free them from their fear, so that, we are resolved Sr to do all we can, for to Obtain an act of Assembly, to Confirm the right of the </p>
<p>[f. 201v]</p>
<p>Inhabitants over their slaves after Baptism, in the same manner that they had it before, for w[i]th out that, they will not suffer them to be Instructed, for fear they should be baptiz’d w-[i]th-out their knowledge, I Reckon that there are in this <span style="text-decoration:line-through;"> City</span> Town, above a thousand slaves, and that if their Masters would take as much care of their salvation, as they do of their bodily health (for the sake of the work they do for them) I should \not/ be able to do my Office alone, but unhappily, they seek not the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness, above everything else, and solid piety, is very rare in this Country.</p>
<p>Sr I have not been catechising in the Country, because they are almost all dutch that live there, and are untractable, so that if <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">those</span> they that live in Town, are affraid that their slaves may demand freedom after baptism, <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">and </span></p>
<p>[f. 201a]</p>
<p>the Country people will certainly believe, that there is some other design upon them, besides <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">bereaving</span> depriving them of their slaves; so that I <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">xx</span> should have made an useless attempt, and whereas I have already told you Sr that I do not want for Catechumens in Town, altho' they do not send one a quarter of the slaves that there are here, yet their number increase from time to time; so that <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">there remains nothing for me\to do/</span> \I have nothing to do/ but \earnestly/ to pray my Sweet redeemer to <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">shower</span> give his blessing to my <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">poor</span> \weak/ endeavors to the End that his glory may be more and more advanced, I take the Liberty to <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">xx</span> ask the help of your good prayers, desiring you to be persuaded that I am with a profound respect,</p><p></p>
Hon[ore]d Sr<br />your most humble and<br />unworthy Servant,<br />E. Neau
<p>[f. 202]</p>
Mr Neau. New York<br />
30 April 1706/7<br />
EMLO Catalogue
Link to EMLO Catalogue
<a href="http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/w/1004410">Letter Record</a>
Letter Type
MS Manifestation
MS Letter
Content Warning
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Elias Neau to John Chamberlayne (Secretary)
Description
An account of the resource
Elias Neau writes to John Chamberlayne (Secretary) discussing the baptising and catechising of enslaved Africans in New York.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
30 April 1706
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lambeth SPG 13 201-2
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
AH/T003197/1: <a href="https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT003197%2F1">Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic (c. 1630-1720)</a>