PRESBYTERIANS AND SLAVERY

IS TOPIC OF ARTICLE IN

LANCASTER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL

            A somewhat negative aspect of the early Scots–Irish settlers in Lancaster County is detailed in a lengthy article in the most recent issue of the Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society.  The author, Dr. Mark Ebersole, former president of Elizabethtown College, has been researching slavery in Lancaster County as practiced among various denominational groups.  Rather surprisingly, there were many slaves owned by Donegal Presbyterians.

            We had been aware of the presence of blacks in the area as there were church pews designated for their use at worship services. These were pews positioned at the far corners of the room before the church interior was changed.  Facing the pulpit on the long northwest wall the pews were in both the right and left corners.  Other evidence that we had already been aware of was the tax records for the 1700’s which usually gave additional information about the taxables.  And the list included quite a number of the larger landowners who were slave owners.  It was almost exclusively the Scots-Irish names, perhaps because they were usually the more prosperous large land-holders.

            The author includes all the names of those owners and also many incidents of runaway slaves and the attempts to have them returned.  He states that Pastors Anderson and McFarquhar, along with their families, owned eighteen slaves.  To their credit, Donegal owners realized that the state of bondage should not be continued and many of them “liberally” gave sums of money to the African colonization movement, which was designed to send blacks back to Africa and freedom.

            It was a coincidence that while not previously having details regarding slaves among Donegal families, just within the past weeks we received a lengthy family history of the Brice Clark family.  It includes the names and ages of all of their slaves including the children.  The Clarks had moved here from elsewhere in the county after purchasing the large estate, which was the property of Lazarus Lowrey.  That estate, which is about halfway between Donegal Church and Marietta, became one of the farms bought by Simon Cameron in the late 1800’s.  Brice Clark and his descendants became very prominent members of Donegal Church.  They served as elders and clerks of session, and Martha Bladen Clark was president of the Donegal Society for quite a number of years.  Brice Clark was also the stepfather of poetess Sally Hastings having married Sally’s widowed mother Margaret Anderson.

            Another positive note regarding Donegal slave-holders, is the fact that Samuel Cook who lived on the property where the stone cabin was moved to Ireland within recent years, was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1777, and he is said to have been one of the first persons in the state who emancipated his slaves.  That same Assembly in 1780 passed the Gradual Emancipation Act, which ruled that all children of slaves would become free at age twenty-eight.

            Dr. Ebersole’s article makes very interesting reading and Journals of the Lancaster County Historical Society are available for our members to borrow by signing out. 

                                                                               Mary Karnes