Black Baptists formed a 12-church association in 1854

On Sept. 1, 1854, the Rev. Richard Preston launched the African Baptist Association, a union of 12 Black Baptist churches in Nova Scotia, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Now called the African United Baptist Association, it is still active, and Parks Canada describes it as one of the most important community organizations for African Nova Scotians from 1854 to 1918.

Preston was born in Virginia in 1791 or 1792 and was enslaved, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography said. He bought his freedom and travelled to Nova Scotia to find his mother, who was among the Black Refugees who fled the United States during the War of 1812. The biography puts that group at about 2,000 people, while Parks Canada gives about 1,600.

He found his mother in the township of Preston, stayed with her until her death and took the township’s name as his own. By 1823 he had been licensed to preach, the biography said, after an apprenticeship with the Baptist minister John Burton.

The Black Baptists of Halifax needed a church of their own, and they needed money to build it. Deacons Prince William Sport and John Hamilton raised funds to send Preston to England for ordination and fundraising. He landed at Liverpool on Feb. 15, 1831, and returned to Nova Scotia in the summer of 1832 with a little more than 600 pounds, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography said. Parks Canada gives either 1831 or 1832 for the trip, so the exact timing of the voyage is not settled in the sources reviewed.

The African Chapel on Cornwallis Street in Halifax had an official founding date of April 14, 1832, while Preston was still in England. The biography said the House of Assembly approved a 25-pound grant for the building on April 6, 1833, but the colony’s Council refused it. The congregation finished the chapel anyway. The church later became known as the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church and, in 2018, was renamed New Horizons Baptist Church.

The Halifax congregation became the “Mother Church” of the 1854 association, the biography said, and Preston was called its “Bishop.” An account of the association’s history published by the Atlantic Baptist Convention says that over 22 years, beginning with the 1832 founding of the Halifax church, Preston helped establish 12 African Baptist churches across the province.

The same account described the association as “an institution established by black people for black people,” one that gave Black Baptists ownership of their own religious future instead of leaving them dependent on white churches. It calls the association the first known Black organization in Nova Scotia, a claim that rests on that account alone and was not independently confirmed for this article.

Parks Canada said Preston also helped found a Mutual Aid Improvement Society and an Anti-Slavery Society. It said the Baptist church was central to community life for Black Nova Scotians, and that Burton had earlier established Baptist churches at Halifax in 1795 and Hammonds Plains in 1820.

Preston died in Halifax on July 16, 1861, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. A funeral procession passed through Halifax and Dartmouth on July 19 and he was buried at Crane’s Hill. The Rev. Benson Smithers was quoted as saying, “The founder of our churches, Father Richard Preston, is dead.” Parks Canada said Preston was designated a national historic person in 2005.

The association Preston launched outlived him by more than 160 years. The Atlantic Baptist Convention account says it operated largely as a fellowship of sister churches in the 19th century and added ministries, boards and committees to serve its members in the 20th.

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Sources: Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Richard Preston; Parks Canada, This Week in History profile of Richard Preston; Atlantic Baptist Convention, Heritage Story: The African United Baptist Association. Sources differ on some dates and counts, as noted above.