George M. Erskine:
Slave * Presbyterian Minister * Missionary
by George M. Apperson
Prior to his coming to Maryville in 1812, Isaac
Anderson had educated Abel Pearson and together they petitioned the
justices of Blount County, Tennessee, on September 26, 1815, for the
manumission of George M. Erskine. On the same day, Erskine stood before
the Presbytery of Union, asking to be received as a candidate for the
ministry. Questioned on his religious experience and his reasons for
seeking a ministerial vocation, he was also examined on English grammar
and his answers were unanimously sustained.
Both Pearson and Erskine have passed into quiet
oblivion but Isaac Anderson recognized their intellectual potential
and prepared them for the Presbyterian ministry. For Erskine in particular,
hardly a shred of memory survives. He was a slave for more than thirty-six
years and his remarkable mind caught Anderson's attention around 1812,
when he prepared him for membership in the New Providence Presbyterian
Church. In Maryville, Anderson succeeded Gideon Blackburn, who himself
freed the slave John Gloucester and trained him for the ministry. Blackburn
is remembered for his heroic effort to educate the children of the Cherokee,
but Anderson's genius was devoted to training men of all complexions
for the ministry, influenced directly by his own education at Liberty
Hall in Lexington, Virginia, where his classmate from 1795 to 1799 was
John Chavis, the first African American Presbyterian minister.
Erskine became a preacher of impressive ability.
At the organization of the Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee,
he shared the pulpit with Dr. Charles Coffin, a graduate of Harvard
and president of Greeneville College. Dr. Frederick A. Ross, later minister
of the Kingsport church, was present and described Erskine as "a
large man with a strong, good face -- of decided talents, giving a masterly
sermon in the vigorous [style] of the Rev. Isaac Anderson ... by whom
he was educated." Dr. Coffin tutored John Gloucester, the first
ordained African American Presbyterian minister, at Greeneville College
(now Tusculum) and the records of Union Presbytery show his concern
for Erskine's career.
After he was licensed in 1818, Erskine was passionately
engaged in liberating his wife and children from slavery. He traveled
incessantly, preaching and appealing for funds to buy their freedom.
A somewhat garbled newspaper account records his appearance at the First
Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia, in 1819. At Oxford, North
Carolina in 1826, a visitor from Champlain, New York, heard him when
he spoke at the Presbyterian Church. She recorded in her journal, "Part
of his family are still in bondage, he is soliciting aid for the purpose
of emancipating them -- after which it is his intention to go to our
colony in Liberia." Forty dollars was contributed, and the lady
remarked, "So much for a slave-holding people."
Presbyterians in East Tennessee often looked for
assistance to New England rather than to synods or presbyteries in the
South. In 1815 both Dr. Anderson and Dr. Coffin asked the Missionary
Society of Connecticut to send a qualified minister or two to help them.
Dr. Anderson wrote that in eighteen counties in East Tennessee, "there
is not more than 3,000 souls out of a population of 100,000, that have
any opportunity to hear the gospel, except from illiterate men, many
of whom cannot even read the Scriptures." No help came and Dr.
Anderson was determined to train men to fill the void. Twelve years
later he was able to recommend to the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions in Boston a well-qualified man to be sent to Africa
-- George M. Erskine.
Almost everything we now know about Erskine comes
from recently discovered correspondence between Dr. Anderson and Erskine,
and the Boston-based missionary society. They invited Erskine to come
for an interview but he replied that though he was prepared to go to
Africa as a missionary, he was too poor to make the trip to Boston.
He wrote that from 1818,
I redeemed my wife and five children. The price
of this ransome I obtained by traviling & preaching in the following
States of the Union. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky,
Alabama, & Tennessee. I beg leave to ascribe the whole to the Strange
& Kind providence of God, however it has kept us in humble circumstances
in the world.
Help was forthcoming and Erskine made the trip,
preaching and raising funds in New England. When he visited Philadelphia
on his way home, he was well received and $450.00 was contributed so
that he might buy his twenty-one-year-old son in Tennessee, who was
still a slave but who wanted to be educated for the ministry.
Sponsored by the American Colonization Society,
Erskine was enabled to fulfill his great ambition to go as a missionary
to Africa. Citizens of Philadelphia chartered a brig, appropriately
named Liberia, which sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, on January
15, 1830, with fifty-eight African Americans on board. Erskine, his
wife and mother, with seven of his children, joined three other Tennesseans,
two men from Philadelphia and forty-three men and women from Virginia.
Two Swiss missionaries and Dr. J.W. Anderson, physician to the colony,
were also passengers. Arriving at Monrovia, the capital of Liberia,
on February 17, 1830, in apparent good health, Erskine and the whole
group were sent to Caldwell, a village nine miles outside the city.
At first, Liberia appeared to be a tropical paradise.
Erskine wrote from Caldwell on April 3, saying
that he was well pleased with the country. He was alarmed, however,
that education was almost non-existent and that only seventeen in his
group could read the Holy Scriptures. He feared that the colony would
be populated with freed but illiterate slaves who were not concerned
with the education of their children. The natives, he added, were "extremely
in favor of their groveling superstition," and he surmised that
the uneducated emigrants would tend to become like them. "I humbly
pray to Almighty God," he continued, "that he may move upon
the minds of the whole combined nation, so as to incline your honors
to establish free or public schools, with enlightened teachers."
His zeal, still fired by the faith of Dr. Anderson and his colleagues,
was that he would be able to preach the gospel extensively in Africa.
He believed that God had brought him "into the harvest field of
immortal souls," and he concluded with the "hope he will spare
my life, and engage my heart and hands in the glorious work; but I submit
myself into his hands, to do as he seemeth good."
The dark conclusion of the story came rapidly;
within six months Erskine was dead. By the end of the year, his wife,
his mother, four of his children and nineteen other emigrants who arrived
on the Liberia, joined him in an African grave. His sons Wallace and
Hopkins and his daughter Martha survived. Wallace emigrated to Sierra
Leone and Hopkins went to Cape Palmas, while Martha's subsequent history
is blank. All three were literate but here their story ends. And the
son Erskine left in Maryville to be educated by Dr. Anderson disappeared
without a trace.
Biographical Notes
Dr. Isaac Anderson (1780-1857), educated at Liberty
Hall Academy, Lexington, Virginia; developed the Southern and Western
Theological Seminary which became Maryville College.
The Rev. John Chavis (1762-1838), "brought
forward" by Dr. John Blair Smith, president of Hampden-Sydney College,
educated at Liberty Hall by Lexington Presbytery, he became a missionary
for the General Assembly 1801-1808, and established his own school in
Raleigh, NC, in 1809, teaching both black and white students.
Dr. Charles Coffin (1775-1853), honor graduate
of Harvard, president of Greeneville College (now Tusculum) 1810-1827,
president of East Tennessee University, 1827-1833, (now the University
of Tennessee at Knoxville).
The Rev. George M. Erskine (1778/9-1830). Virtually
everything known about him is incorporated in this article.
The Rev. John Gloucester (1776-1822), a slave named
"Jack," purchased by Gideon Blackburn in 1806, educated at
Greeneville College, he became minister of the African Presbyterian
Church in Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Abel Pearson (1787-1856), educated by Isaac
Anderson at Union Academy in Grassy Valley, Knox County. A vigorous
opponent of slavery and a "mechanical genius," who accepted
little financial support for his ministry; published An Analysis of
the Principles of Divine Government (Athens, TN, 1832-33).
