Rev. Amos Freeman and a New Era for Black Organizing in Portland
When the Rev. Amos N. Freeman became the first full-time pastor of Portland’s Abyssinian Congregational Church in the fall of 1841, a glorious revival of the little Black meeting house on Munjoy Hill began. Financial troubles had ripped the congregation apart in the late 1830s, as its creditors filed lawsuits and members turned against one another.
“During ‘the reign of terror,’ the people became much scattered, and divided,” an Abyssinian pastor, the Rev. Amos Beman, recounted in 1841; “the minds of many soured and embittered — some were discouraged and they ‘hung their harps upon the willow refusing to sing the songs of Zion;’ while some — the ‘noble few’ — still wept between the porch and the altar, mourning and sighing over the desolations of Israel.”
After the congregation fired Minister Samuel Chase, the meeting house only opened to the public a handful of times. But when Beman visited Portland in 1841, church services at the Abyssinian were packed and the “hearts and minds of Christians were awakened.”
Portland presented a much different environment than Rev. Freeman had experienced at his previous post in Newark, N.J. There were only about 400 African Americans in Portland. Many had come to Maine on trading ships from the Caribbean, while others migrated from other parts of New England and the Canadian Maritimes. Some Black families had been in Maine for generations, their ancestors kidnapped from West Africa and sold to sea captains and wealthy coastal merchants. Several of them were formerly enslaved in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and Mississippi.
When slavery was abolished in the British West Indies on Aug. 1, 1834, African Americans from all backgrounds in Portland “celebrated in a quiet way,” according to the Portland Transcript. Could it be possible, they wondered, that white Americans would one day see the light?
In 1886, a Portland Transcript reporterwas “rummaging” in a “little-used drawer” when he discovered some notes someone wrote about working-class Black Portlanders in the antebellum period. There was Jack Stark Lancey, an oakum picker — a tedious and sticky job that involved teasing apart the fibers of old ship rigging and recycling it to make caulking for shipbuilding. In 1836, Maine pan-Africanist writer, inventor and oakum picker Robert Benjamin Lewis patented a hand-cranked oakum-picking machine that became widely used in Maine shipyards, making the work of low-wage Black laborers like Lancey much easier.
The reporter read of Jack Groves, a “very active man” who worked for shipbuilder Jacob Knight. Joseph Shepard, a native of the Congo, worked as a horse-cart driver, while his son William Shepard “fed his horse on shavings.” Abyssinian co-founder Clem Thompson was “a tall, fine looking man,” and Lewis Shepard was “a smart fellow, who delighted in a fight at general muster,” presumably for militia trainings, “or on any other occasion.” “Old Farm” Shepard had a stand selling spruce beer, eggnog, candy and gingerbread.
Peter Pier, a native of the West Indies, worked on the wharves, went to sea and drove a truck team. Abyssinian leader Christian Manuel was a “genteel barber” and fellow Abyssinian co-founder John Siggs was a stevedore. Joel Young, who lived on the north side of Bramhall Hill, played his fife, and a man cited simply as Dusenbury, a laborer, played his fiddle. Boston Jackson’s oath was: “I hope to go to Boston.” William Richard was “a large man, simple-minded, on whose forehead the boys used to pretend to stick a fourpence, and then get him to butt it against a wall, and when he had taken two or three butts they would drop the fourpence, and he would seize it, thinking he had just shaken it off.” According to the Transcript, a man referred to only as Craig was “a horrid, savage-looking … borer.”
Several Black residents of the city were sailors, and they told Rev. Beman stories of many “hair-breadth escapes by flood and field,” of “perils by sea, and of perils by land.”
“Many of them have friends and relatives in bondage — some have children there,” Beman wrote in a letter to the Black activist and minister James Pennington. “Yes the mother is here, and the children there, destined to meet no more on earth! Here the widow weeps for husband and friend engulfed in the ocean, where their bodies must remain until that voice, ‘which the winds and the waves obey,’ shall command the ‘sea to give up the dead that are therein.’ Some of those who ‘tempt the raging main’ are the firm and devoted friends of the Lord Jesus, ‘faithful found amid the faithless.’”
Beman lamented that Black sailors from Portland were too often led astray by the “land sharks that infest every port,” enticing them to sinful behavior and robbing them of their hard-earned money. “Benign,” he added, “were they all Christians!”
The good news to Beman was that there was a growing temperance movement in the city. That spring of 1841, the Black temperance society was rekindled at the Abyssinian and 40 men took a pledge to abstain from intoxicating beverages. The reverend happily reported to his readership that Maine’s constitution made “no distinction on account of color,” and any man who resided in the state for three months and dutifully paid his taxes was entitled to the right to vote.
When Rev. Freeman arrived in Portland on a steamship early one May morning in 1841, he was warmly welcomed by his brethren. They brought him to the home of Margaret and Blackstone Driver, where his “kind and warm hearted friend,” Sister Driver, had prepared a delicious breakfast. Born in 1769, Margaret F. Driver, who today is buried in Eastern Cemetery, was born into slavery in North Carolina, but later settled in Portland and became a pillar of the Abyssinian community. A year later, her husband Blackstone helped found the Portland Union Anti-Slavery Society with a group of prominent Black men including its President, Christian C. Manuel, and Secretary Jacob Dickson.
Freeman soon found an eager group of congregants ready to revive the church. Upon his arrival, prayer meetings were held every night except Saturdays, and often the house was so packed that Rev. Freeman had to turn people away. The church formed committees of both men and women to visit every Black resident of the city and plead with them to “take the pledge” of sobriety.
One of Freeman’s duties was to teach Black children, and in 1846 he became the principal at the segregated school for those kids, housed in the Abyssinian Meeting House. Freeman became known as a “devoted and indefatigable teacher,” according to Portland School Board minutes, and was credited with introducing a popular music program. Black activist Reuben Ruby’s son, the future Texas state senator George T. Ruby, was said to have developed his beautiful singing voice there before the school was closed in 1856 due to lack of enrollment. The remaining Black students were finally allowed to attend the city’s white schools. George Ruby became the first Black student to graduate from Portland High School.
Freeman was a charismatic preacher, and membership in the Abyssinian grew during his tenure. White people had become so “attached to him” that white congregants helped fill Sunday services, according to the reverend’s 1893 obituary in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Abolitionist Samuel Fessenden and a number of white sea captains regularly attended services there, and several white families purchased pews at the church.
As Abyssinian researcher Randolph Dominic wrote, Freeman likely preached a “strict moral code,” as congregants were occasionally censured or expelled from the congregation for behavior deemed sinful. One parish meeting contained the resolution “that this Church Deam it sinfull to visit [dances], theaters and Sirkices [circuses],” and “voted that if any goes to any of these places they shall be delt with.”
Freeman was able to purchase a home on St. John Street, at the western end of town, and is said to have taken in formerly enslaved African Americans. However, with only 50 to 60 members during Freeman’s tenure, the church continued to struggle financially. In 1850, there were only four dollars left in the Abyssinian treasury. As a result of its money woes, the church was not able to pay Rev. Freeman his full promised salary and he had to do a lot of fundraising at wealthier white churches.
One day, when he visited the Congregational church (now the First Parish Church) on Cleveland Street in Brunswick to solicit donations, a kerfuffle erupted before he even had a chance to speak. As the Brunswick journalist Albert Tenney wrote years later:
Two gentlemen of the congregation, of sea going habits and anti-negro prejudices, on coming into the church and seating themselves, noticed the colored minister, and withdrew with haste and indignation. It happened next day that a street preacher of eccentric manners and speech, addressed a crowd from a box at the corner of one of the streets. Among those who pressed up near him to listen were the aforesaid sea captains, whose prevailing complexion was neither black nor white, The preacher startled his hearers by shouting, “A wonderful miracle took place on the hill in the great church, yesterday! God sent a colored messenger from heaven to declare his will unto the people. He sat down in the pulpit, and without opening his mouth he cast out two devils!”
Next month this column will cover Rev. Freeman’s role in reviving the Colored Convention Movement in Maine to fight for abolition and civil rights as the nation inched its way toward civil war.
Andy O’Brien is the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO. You can reach him at andy@maineworkingclasshistory.com.
