Mount Elvin Baptist Church – The Birthplace of Trinidad’s Baptist Religion
Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on a small knoll off Hindustan Highway on the outskirts of New Grant in southern Trinidad. It is an unpretentious church and yet it can be regarded as the epicenter of the Baptist religion in Trinidad and Tobago. This church was recognized in 1816 and the importance of that day has to do with the settlement of the “Merikens” in Trinidad in that yr.
In 1816 demobilized Africans who had served in the British Military for the duration of the War of 1812 amongst the British and the Americans were settled in Trinidad in what arrived to be recognized as the Firm Villages. According to A.B. Huggins in his e-book “the Saga of the Companies” the time period “Merikens” arose due to the fact these individuals could not correctly pronounce the letter A in American. John McNish Weiss in his paper “The Corps of Colonial Marines” states that these “Merikin” troopers had been slaves in the United states of america who have been promised their independence if they fought for the British. Recruited by the British 1st in Maryland and Virginia and later in Ga, they had been a preventing unit considerably praised for valor and self-discipline.
When the British Army organizations remaining for house in England in April 1815, the 6 Black organizations turned the third Battalion Colonial Marines, garrisoned in Bermuda on Ireland Island. They did garrison duty and worked as artisans and laborers in the constructing of the new Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. When transfer to the West India Regiments was proposed the guys turned down the notion. baptist church in Raleigh but not least led the British govt to offer to location them in Trinidad as independent farmers. On accepting the supply they still left Bermuda on 15 July 1816.The first group of seventy one settled in Dunmore Hill and Mount Elvin even though the next team of seventy two settled in Indian Wander.
These ended up spiritual individuals who followed the Baptist faith practiced in the southern United States. Even though there had been no clergymen amid them there have been 5 men who were described as Anabaptist preachers who held Sunday ceremonies. One of these men was acknowledged as Brother Will Hamilton. In 1808 the London Missionary Modern society (Baptist) despatched workers to Guyana and Tobago and in 1809 one particular of them, Thomas Adam, relocated to Trinidad. He and afterwards Reverend George Cowen while functioning on the establishment of St John’s Baptist Church in Port of Spain Trinidad also gave help to these African-American ex-slaves who had been practicing a version of the Baptist faith. In time, the similarities of the faith led to the adoption of the missionaries’ version of the Baptist faith that arrived to be called in Trinidad, London Baptist.
More than time even so, according to Ashram Stapleton in his e-book “The Start and Growth of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and Tobago”, there created a schism as some persons in the church desired specified African methods integrated and the London Missionary Culture frowned on these practices. Eventually these persons remaining the church and were very first known as the “Disobedient Baptists” and lastly the Non secular or Shouter Baptist. Other distinctions in the London Baptists then led to additional variations of the Baptist faith with the development of the Independent Baptists and the Essential Baptists.