Andrew Bryan

Andrew Bryan (1737- 1812) was for many years the celebrated pastor of the first African Church in Savannah. Bryan came from a family of slaves owned by Jonathan Bryan, Esq., a wealthy plantation owner near Savannah. Converted in 1782 through the ministry of George Leile, a former slave who later ministered in Jamaica, Andrew Bryan, with help from Jonathan Clarke (a plantation owner on the Savannah River), the Rev. Abraham Marshall (who was instrumental in the 1780s and ‘90s in assisting the African churches of Savannah), and Leile, formed the First African church of Savannah in 1788, the first church of its kind in America. Two letters from Marshall and one from Cooke, all written to John Rippon, an influential Baptist minister and editor in London, appeared in John Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register in 1791. In the mid-1780s, Marshall writes on 19 July 1790, Bryan and his followers erected a building in the Yamacraw section of Savannah, but were frequently “interrupted” in their services and “artfully dispossessed” of their meeting place by disgruntled whites.  Bryan, along with his brother and many of his followers, were “imprisoned and whipped” for continuing to hold services.  Andrew Bryan and some other enlightened men of Savannah intervened and the black congregation was allowed to meet freely thereafter.  They then met in Jonathan Bryan’s barn at Brampton for the next two years (Baptist Annual Register, vol. 1 (1790-93), 340-41). Clarke informs Rippon that Andrew Bryan, after the death of his master, purchased his freedom and returned to Yamacraw, where he purchased land on which to build a house and a building for his congregation, which by 1788 had grown to more than 500 (ibid., p. 342).  In 1794 Bryan presided over the completion of a new building for the congregation, the first brick structure to be owned by African-Americans in Georgia (the church has remained in this building to the present day). Shortly before Mrs. Smith’s arrival in Savannah, an “Account of the Negro Church at Savannah, and of two Negro Ministers” appeared in the Baptist Annual Register, which included letters to John Rippon, the editor and an influential Baptist minister in London, from Jonathan Clarke (dated 22 December 1792) and Abraham Marshall (dated 1 May 1793). Clarke (1737-1803?) owned a plantation along the Savannah River that was given to him as payment for his services during the Revolutionary War.  His letter to Rippon offered the following description of Andrew Bryan: “Andrew is free only since the death of his old master, and purchased his freedom of one of the heirs at the rate of 50£.  He was born at Goose Creek, about 16 miles from Charleston, South Carolina; his mother was a slave, and died in the service of his old master: his father a slave, yet living, but rendered infirm by age for ten years past.  Andrew was married nine years since, which was about the time he and his wife were brought to the knowledge of their wretched state by nature: His wife is named Hannah, and remains a slave to the heirs of his old master; they have no children: He was ordained by our Brother Marshall: he has no assistant preacher but his Brother Sampson, who continues a faithful slave, and occasionally exhorts. . . . [Andrew] had four Deacons appointed, but not regularly introduced.  He supports himself by his own labour.  There are no white people that particularly belong to his church, but we have reason to hope that he has been instrumental in the conviction and converting of some whites. . . . Perhaps fifty of Andrew’s church can read, but only three can write” (ibid., 541).  Clarke had recently been appointed a trustee of the African congregation for the purpose of raising money for the new building. Clarke further notes that Thursday meetings had been suppressed due to opposition by “some despisers of religion,” but the church worshiped “from sun rise to sun set on Sabbath days” (ibid., 540).  Marshall’s letter, written just two weeks after Mrs. Smith’s visit to the church, notes that the African church had “given repeated proofs, by their sufferings, of their zeal for the cause of God and religion; and, I believe, are found in the faith, and strict in discipline” (ibid., p. 545).   In a later volume of the Baptist Annual Register, Rippon published a letter to him from Bryan, dated 23 December 1800.  In his letter, Bryan describes his situation as pastor.  He notes that his wife had recently obtained her freedom and that his pecuniary circumstances are quite comfortable, “having a house and lot in this city, besides the land on which several buildings stand, for which I receive a small rent, and a fifty-six acre-tract of land, with all necessary buildings, four miles in the country, and eight slaves; for whose education and happiness, I am enabled, thro’ mercy to provide” (Baptist Annual Register, vol. 3 [1798-1800], 366).  He says he now preaches three times on Sundays, “baptizing frequently from 10 to 30 at a time in the Savannah [River], and administering the sacred supper, not only without molestation, but in the presence, and with the approbation and encouragement of many of the white people.  We are now about 700 in number, and the work of the Lord goes on prosperously.” He notes the his church, “which is getting too unwieldly for one body,” was about to form another congregation, what would become the Third Baptist Church in Savannah (ibid., 367) (a second Baptist church, composed of whites, was organized in 1795).  At the time of Bryan’s death in 1812, the First African Church had almost 1500 members.  See also Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 13.