Death stalks the Moravians in Jamaica 1754-1834

THE MORAVIAN Church in Jamaica might not be one of the most popular, but Moravian missionaries have been coming here since December 1754. The first three to arrive at what is now Black River, St Elizabeth were Zacharias Caries, Thomas Shallcross and Gottlieb Haberecht.

The Unity of the Brethren, as it is known, became a Church in Germany in 1457, but, for many reasons, including years of persecution, it was not able to firmly plant itself. In 1727, it was given a base on the property of Count Nicholas Von Zinzendorf.

The Brethren’s interest in Jamaica was motivated by absentee plantation owners William Foster and Joseph Foster-Barham, “who became disturbed in their conscience for the spiritual condition of the slaves on their estates in Jamaica”, Lloyd A. Cooke writes in The Story of The Jamaica Missions.

The brothers approached the Moravian Church in England, which sent the missionaries to be attached to the Fosters’ plantations at Bogue, Two Mile Wood, Elim and Lancaster, districts that still exist in St Elizabeth today, as well as Mesopotamia in Westmoreland.

The arrival of Caries, Shallcross and Haberecht was the beginning of decades of deaths, severe challenges and growth for the Moravian Church in Jamaica between 1754 and 1834. In 1755 when Shallcross died, the Foster brothers gave the missionaries 700 acres of land near Santa Cruz where they built a mission station call Carmel, near swamplands. It was also to become an estate where the Moravians held enslaved Africans. Carmel later evolved into a graveyard for missionaries, some of whom died shortly after arrival.

The beginning of the work of the missionaries was far from being glorious. They were instantly detested and distrusted by the overseers. The nonchalance from the enslaved Africans was not encouraging either, but, by 1756, they were able to baptise 77 of them. And, if the initial missionaries had harboured any thought of an idyllic personal life in the tropics, and the unencumbered saving of souls, they were dead wrong. Theirs and the sojourns of those who came after them were fraught with numerous challenges, and death was to put an end to the mission of many up to 1834.

The missionaries came with the understanding that they were to be taken care of financially by the overseers of the estates and their functionaries, but they were immediately resented by those gatekeepers, who saw them as potential meddlers in the running of the plantations. The profitability of the estates, and not the salvation of the enslaved, was the objective of the managers. So, the overseers did everything to frustrate the missionaries.

They got no salary from abroad and little support from the overseers. At Old Carmel, they were forced to cultivate ground provisions and rear cattle. This, of course, required great manual labour. For this, they turned to the very people whose lot they had come to ameliorate, the enslaved Africans, 30 to 40 of whom they owned, when Old Carmel was an estate. The baptism and conversion of the enslaved went slower than expected, despite periods of surges. The missionaries worked under great pressure of operating businesses to survive and ministering to the enslaved.

The leadership of the mission stations changed many times, starting with the arrival of Christian Rauch and Charles Shulze in 1756, and the withdrawal of Caries and Halbrecht in 1759. Rauch died in 1763 and, when Frederick Schlegel arrived in 1764 ,the stations operating were at Carmel, Bogue and Mesopotamia and a few outstations. Schlegel died six years after arriving.

By 1799, the Moravians had baptised 938 people, which was way below expectations. It was a period of stagnation for the missionaries and, by 1808, the numbers stood at two, Thomas Ellis at Bogue, and John Lang at Carmel.

Between 1815 and 1824, there was a rise in the number of converts and mission stations. Lang’s work is credited for the growth in the number of converts between 1809 and 1823. Lang died at Carmel in June 1818, in his mid-40s. The first church building was erected at New Eden in 1820. Death-ridden Carmel was closed in 1823 and an old plantation at Fairfield was bought.

The name Carmel was resurrected when New Carmel Chapel was opened on a hill at Hopeton in Westmoreland. It was built on land donated by a Christian owner of enslaved Africans, Henderson Scott, who eventually severed ties with that station.

At Mesopotamia in Westmoreland, one of the earliest stations, things were grim, and it was considered one of the failed missions at the time. Death, illnesses, poor attendance, the nonchalance of the enslaved, and missionaries’ refusal to be posted there made the situation untenable, and it was closed in I834 when the Act of Emancipation became effective on August 1.

The area in St Elizabeth where the missions were located was generally wetlands, hot, humid, and abounding with disease-carrying insects. Much of Old Carmel was swampland, where miasma wafted, making people sick. Some returned because of ill health, but dysentery, yellow fever and malaria had put many of them into graves far from where they had come.

In their efforts to save the souls of enslaved people, they had lost their lives, and the enslaved continued to survive the brutal system of chattel slavery. The Moravian Church, too, has survived, with stations in Kingston and central and western Jamaica.