ABSTRACT
On August 24, 1704, Elias Neau received a license from the territorial Governor, Lord Combury, to work with “children, Indians, Negroes, and other persons,” in the New York area at a salary of 50 pounds per year. On September 3, 1722, death, at age 60, brought Neau’s eighteen-year ministry among African-American New Yorkers to an end. In 1976, in New York City’s Borough of Manhattan, there were twelve predominantly black Episcopal congregations with a combined total of 6,562 “present communicants. While the English regulations concerning slaves were more stringent than those under the Dutch, free whites in New York enjoyed greater religious toleration than the free whites of New Amsterdam. Free at last, Neau returned to New York, prospered in business, became a freeholder in the East Ward of the City, and an elder in the French Protestant Church.
