ABSTRACT
Rev. Alexander Crummell characterized Peter Williams as “timid” for allowing the Episcopal hierarchy to decree an unconscionable seventeen-year delay in his path to the ministry. Some thirty years later, when the “African Society” had gone out of existence, Williams contended that the burial ground should be turned over to an eminently more stable organization. The official break with Trinity came early in 1809, when New York’s black Episcopalians began worshiping together in a school on William Street, from 1809 to 1812. In 1818, Bishop Hobart consecrated the new St. Philip’s edifice “for the use of coloured members of the Protestant Episcopal Church,” making it the first African-American congregation in the Diocese of New York. With a trading license from the London African Institution, Cuffe had already taken his ship twice to Sierra Leone, each trip carrying a commercial cargo and African-American farmers and artisans to the crown colony.
