(RELIGION) First Free Will Baptist Church of Freedmen

Sale 2239 - Lot 463

Price Realized: $ 2,880

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(RELIGION.) First Free Will Baptist Church of Freedmen. Receipt in the form of a broadside, 13-1/4 x 8-3/4 inches, tipped onto a piece of slightly larger pale blue paper; creased where folded; some wear at the edges; tiny closed tear at the fold. Beaufort, South Carolina, 1864

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an exceedingly scarce broadside receipt for funds to build a freedmen's church. A list of the 177 ex-slave members of the congregation are listed. The receipt is signed by Mrs. C. P. Harriman (possible relation the Harrimans of New Hampshire, active abolitionists). The Free Will Baptist Church in Beaufort, one of the first areas to fall to the Union Forces, was organized on March 27, 1864. Within two days, the Church had 177 members, all ex-slaves. Reverend E. Knowlton of Maine was put in charge of raising funds for a building. By autumn, the frame of the building was completed and shipped south to Hilton Head Island where it was erected on a piece of land donated by a Captain Springer of Massachusetts. The church did well for almost three years. However, President Johnson's Reconstruction policies put the same white people back in charge and soon the colored congregation was scattered and the church was torn down.