{{Short description|American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist}} {{Infobox person | name = Moses Wilkinson | other_names = Daddy Moses Old Moses | birth_date = 1746/47 | occupation = Wesleyan Methodist preacher }}

'''Moses "Daddy Moses" Wilkinson''' or '''"Old Moses"''' (c. 1746/47<ref name="BoN">{{cite web |url=https://novascotia.ca/archives/Africanns/BNresults.asp?Search=Moses+Wilkinson |title=African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition |website=novascotia.ca (official website of Nova Scotia)|date=20 April 2020 }} Wilkinson's entry in the Book of Negroes gives his age as 36.</ref><ref name="Nash">{{cite web |url=http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/essays/nash.html |title=Thomas Peters: Millwright and Deliverer |author=Gary B. Nash |author-link=Gary B. Nash }}</ref> &ndash; ?) was an American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist. His ministry combined Old Testament divination with African religious traditions such as conjuring and sorcery.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=The Radical Methodist Congregation of Daddy Moses |url=http://www.blackloyalist.info/the-radical-methodist-congregation-of-daddy-moses/ |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=www.blackloyalist.info}}</ref> He gained freedom from slavery in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War and was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher in New York and Nova Scotia. In 1791, he migrated to Sierra Leone, preaching alongside ministers Boston King and Henry Beverhout.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schwarz |first=Suzanne |title='Our Mad Methodists': Abolitionism, Methodism and Missions in Sierra Leone in the Late Eighteenth Century |date=2011 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42909807 |journal=Wesley and Methodist Studies |volume=3 |pages=121–133 |doi=10.2307/42909807 |jstor=42909807 |issn=2291-1723|url-access=subscription }}</ref> There, he established the first Methodist church in Settler Town and survived a rebellion in 1800.

==Early life== Circa 1746, Moses Wilkinson was born enslaved on a plantation in Nansemond County, Virginia. He was enslaved by Miles Wilkinson.<ref name="Clifford">{{cite book |last=Clifford |first=Mary Louise |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SJqMtJYTbDsC&pg=PA15 |title=From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution |date=January 2006 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=9780786425570 |pages=15–18}}</ref>

Wilkinson was blind and unable to walk without assistance, possibly due to surviving smallpox.<ref name="BL">{{cite web |title=The Radical Methodist Congregation of Daddy Moses |url=http://www.blackloyalist.info/the-radical-methodist-congregation-of-daddy-moses/ |website=blackloyalist.info}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Saltwater Spirituals |url=https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/31239/scripts/ss.tei.html?sequence=58&isAllowed=y |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=dalspace.library.dal.ca}}</ref>

== Self-liberation == The 1775 Dunmore's Proclamation promised slaves of American rebels their freedom if they would join the British forces fighting in the American Revolutionary War. The following year, Wilkinson led a band of slaves to freedom, also freeing himself.<ref name="Nash" /> He reached New York City, which the British forces occupied for years during the war.<ref name="Nash" /><ref name="Clifford" />

== Ministry ==

=== New York === In New York, the self-appointed, illiterate Wesleyan Methodist preacher gathered together a congregation.<ref name="BL" /> He was "a very fiery preacher, so much that some who watched him feared for his health."<ref name=":1" /> left|thumb|281x281px|Congregants of the Shelburne Methodist Episcopal Church (1873-1940s), the "spiritual descendant of Moses Wilkinson's original congregation."<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Radical Methodist Congregation of Daddy Moses |url=http://www.blackloyalist.info/the-radical-methodist-congregation-of-daddy-moses/ |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=www.blackloyalist.info}}</ref>

=== Nova Scotia === When the British were defeated in 1783, they fulfilled their promise of freedom to thousands of former slaves, evacuating them to other colonies and England. Wilkinson joined some 3,000 other Black Loyalists in on ''L'Abondance'' to Halifax in Nova Scotia;<ref name="BL" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite news |last=Stouffer |first=Allen P. |date= |title=Towards Community: Black Methodists in Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia |pages=1 |work=Historical Papers 2000: Canadian Society of Church History |url=http://www.stuartbarnard.com/csch-sche/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/2000-12-stouffer-article-1.pdf}}</ref> he is listed with them in the ''Book of Negroes''.<ref name="BoN" /> The largest Black Loyalist settlement in Nova Scotia was established in Birchtown, but the refugees found the climate and conditions harsh, and the Crown was slow to grant them land.<ref name="BL" />

In the spring of 1784, Shelburne was visited by William Black, the province’s future Methodist leader. Shelburne reported preaching to 200 Blacks at Birchtown, sixty of whom were converted by Wilkinson.<ref name=":2" /> His first convert was Violet "Peggy" King,<ref name="BL" /> a self-liberated freedwoman from North Carolina, whom he had met on ''L'Abondance''; she was married to Boston King.<ref name=":2" />

In July 1786, Wilkinson and others organized a Methodist church with seventy-eight members, sixty-six of whom were black.<ref name=":2" />

=== Sierra Leone === On 26 October 1791, 350 people gathered in Wilkinson's church to hear John Clarkson from England explain the Sierra Leone Company's plans to reestablish a colony in West Africa, in what is now Sierra Leone.<ref name="Nash" /> The previous attempt in 1787 had failed and he was recruiting Black Loyalists who wanted to try creating their own settlement in Africa. Displeased with the cold climate and discrimination from the resident whites, who included Loyalist slaveholders, Wilkinson, members of his Methodist congregation, and many blacks of other congregations emigrated; some 1196 Nova Scotian Settlers set sail from Halifax on 15 January 1792.<ref name="Nash" />

The ships made landfall on March 9 1792. Wilkinson established the first Methodist church in Settler Town.<ref>{{cite news |title=Emmy Contenders: Join Louis Gossett Jr. of 'Book of Negroes' on Thursday |author=Glenn Whipp |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=May 6, 2015 |url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/emmys/la-et-st-lou-gossett-jr-book-of-negroes-20150506-story.html}}</ref> The officers of the Sierra Leone Company clashed with members of the independent-minded Christian denominations, and matters came to a head with a failed rebellion led by Methodists in 1800.<ref name="BL" /> Two Methodists were executed; a number of others, mostly Methodist, were exiled elsewhere in West Africa. Wilkinson's brand of Methodism lost favour in the colony.<ref name="BL" /> <!-- Unsourced Wilkinson outlived all other religious leaders of the Nova Scotian settlers. He is commemorated by Wilkinson Road in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which leads to the Methodist Girls High School. !-->

== Legacy == His ministry inspired Gowan Pamphlet,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gowan Pamphlet |url=http://www.slaveryandremembrance.org/almanack/people/bios/biopam.cfm |access-date=October 26, 2022 |website=slaveryandremembrance.org |language=en}}</ref> minister and freedman who founded the Black Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia.<ref name=":0">Woodson, Carter G. ''The History of the Negro Church''. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1921.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Gowan Pamphlet |url=https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/explore/nation-builders/gowan-pamphlet/ |access-date=October 26, 2022 |website=colonialwilliamsburg.org |language=en-US}}</ref>

As detailed above, Wilkinson's preaching led to the creation of the Black Methodist community of Halifax.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Archives |first=Nova Scotia |date=2020-04-20 |title=Nova Scotia Archives - African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition |url=https://archives.novascotia.ca/ |access-date=2022-11-08 |website=Nova Scotia Archives}}</ref>

== See more ==

* List of Black Loyalists

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Further reading== * [https://archive.org/details/epicjourneysoffr00pybu/page/181 <!-- quote=moses wilkinson. --> Cassandra Pybus, ''Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty'']. Beacon Press, 2007 * [https://books.google.com/books?id=-2olIZi8ThsC&dq=moses+wilkinson&pg=PA368 Vincent Carretta (ed.), ''Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century''], University Press of Kentucky, 1996, 2004 * James W. St. G. Walker, [https://archive.org/details/blackloyalistsse0000walk/page/73 <!-- quote=moses wilkinson. --> ''The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870'', 1992] * [https://books.google.com/books?id=w6P8FSfh7GwC&dq=moses+wilkinson&pg=PA73 Simon Schama, ''Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution''], HarperCollins, 2006 * [https://books.google.com/books?id=6qJ71dqsmboC&dq=moses+wilkinson&pg=PA80 Lamin Sanneh, ''Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa'', Harvard University Press, 2001] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20071117073516/http://www.blackloyalist.com/canadiandigitalcollection/story/faith/wesley.htm The Wesleyans]. (Accessed February 2014) * [https://books.google.com/books?id=-7EZBC5y2GEC&dq=moses+wilkinson&pg=PA53 Susan Ware, ''Forgotten Heroes: Inspiring American Portraits From Our Leading Historians'', The Free Press, 1998] * [https://books.google.com/books?id=Eeh4L1CulqYC&dq=moses+wilkinson&pg=PA57 Robin W. Winks, ''The Blacks in Canada: A History'']

{{Black Loyalists}} {{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilkinson, Moses}} Category:African-American Methodist clergy Category:American rebel slaves Category:Nova Scotian Settlers Category:People from Suffolk, Virginia Category:1740s births Category:Date of death missing Category:Fugitive American slaves Category:American expatriates in Sierra Leone Category:Canadian expatriates in Sierra Leone Category:Loyalists in the American Revolution from Virginia Category:Black Nova Scotians Category:People enslaved in Virginia