Collect Day #35, REVEREND THOMAS PAUL
O God, your glory is displayed in all people who are fully alive; we remember today The Reverend Thomas Paul who as a teacher, missionary, theologian and church planter lifted high the Good News of God’s liberating love especially for those who are oppressed by racism and ignorance. May his legacy and witness remind us all that no one is truly free until we are all free; this we ask in the name of him who gave his life for all, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
DAY #35, April 15, 2019
EXETER, NH & BOSTON
REVEREND THOMAS PAUL (1773-1831)
Tammi J Truax
Caesar Nero Paul, father of Thomas Paul, was born in parts unknown, perhaps even to him. He was enslaved from the time he was just a boy to Major John Gilman of Exeter, NH. Paul first served Gilman as a houseboy, but later accompanied him to various battles. It was likely his war service that helped him gain his freedom around 1771.
Paul settled in Exeter and married a woman named Love or Lovey Rollins. Historical accounts note her as White, as enslaved, and also as the daughter of a well-known Stratham, NH lawyer. Caesar and Lovey had at least eight children, including three sons who became Baptist preachers. The large Paul family was well known in the area, and at least some of their children attended Exeter’s public schools.
The eldest son, Thomas, however, attended the Free Will Baptist Church and School in Hollis, NH; was baptized at age 16; and eventually moved to Boston. In 1798, he was among a group of Black men who requested the use for Sunday worship of a schoolhouse in Boston’s North End, where the Black population was concentrated at that time. They had met for nearly a decade at Faneuil Hall.
Instead, they were granted use of a schoolhouse in the West End. In 1804, Paul became preacher for this group, returning to Nottingham, NH, in May of that year to be ordained as a Baptist minister. The next year he married Catherine Waterhouse. It was also in 1805 that he helped establish a formal church for his congregation — the first African Meeting House on Boston’s Beacon Hill, now part of Boston’s Black Heritage Trail.
Paul served as pastor of that church for more than twenty years, while also working diligently to establish independent Black Baptist churches elsewhere, including New York City. He travelled as far as Haiti and England on missions; was a member in the Prince Hall Masons; and helped forge Black Liberation Theology, which tied Bible teachings to African-American equality. His oration skills were highly regarded.
Around 1825, Paul sat for a portrait, which is believed to be the first of a Black man from New Hampshire. It hangs in the National Gallery at The Smithsonian.
His daughter, Susan, was a writer, teacher, member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, and a suffragette. His son, Thomas, Jr., was the first Black graduate of Dartmouth College in 1841 and went on to a career as a Boston school teacher and principal.
Paul is believed to be interred at Copp’s Burying Ground in Boston’s North End, but the exact location is unknown. The family home near Beacon Hill bears a historical marker.
