1852 BLACK BAPTIST ON FUGITIVE SLAVES. Life, Labors, and Travels of Elder Charles Bowles

Excellent and desirable biography of Charles Bowles [1761-1843], a prominent African American Baptist preacher in New England during the first half of the nineteenth century.

His biography identifies his father as an African servant and his mother as a daughter of “the celebrated Col. Morgan,” an officer in the Rifle Corps of the American Revolutionary Army.Apparently in a desire to put the “mulatto child” out of sight, during his childhood he was placed under the care of a Mr. Jones of Lunenburgh, Massachusetts. When Jones died, twelve-year-old Charles Bowles was placed in the family of a Tory whom he disliked. Then, at the age of fourteen, Bowles became the waiter to an officer in the colonial artillery.

Two years later, at the age of 16, Bowles enlisted in the Continental Army, fighting for the independence of the American colonies. After the close of the Revolutionary war, and the disbanding of the army, young Bowles went to New Hampshire where he engaged a small farm. Charles wrestled with a sense that he was called both to Christian commitment and to preach the Gospel, even heading sea for three years to avoid sitting under religious teaching. He could not escape either. When he returned, he was baptized into the Calvinistic Baptist Church, in Wentworth, New Hampshire.

Soon thereafter, though, after prayerful study of Scripture, he changed to the newly formed Free Will Baptist Church. It was in this church that he yielded to a sense of calling to ministry. Licensed by the Free Will Baptist Church, Bowles traveled from city to city preaching the gospel. Between 1808 and 1817, he labored in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, the state of Rhode Island, and Williamstown, Vermont, baptizing many people and planting several churches.

His ministry was not without controversy, both as a Baptist and as a person of color. In Vermont, a mob sought to put an end to the large baptismal services he was conducting, a black minister baptizing and preaching to largely white audiences. They threatened to drown him in the very pond he was baptizing in. However, according to the history, he preached with such power that some of his persecutors ended up being baptized in the service they had intended to break up.

He was also active as an abolitionist, and an excellent work on abolition and the Fugitive Slave Act was added to his biography. The biography was written by fellow black minister and abolitionist John W. Lewis.

Interestingly, it also seems that Bowles became a Millerite / Adventist in his eschatology toward the end of his life. Le Roy Froom asserted, “One of the unusual characters in the roster of Millerite preachers was a colored minister, Charles Bowles.” According to Froom, Bowles preached “the standard Millerite exposition of prophecy.”

Lewis, Elder John W. The Life, Labors, and Travels of Elder Charles Bowles, of the Free Will Baptist Denomination, by Elder John W. Lewis. Together with an Essay on the Character and Condition of the African Race by the Same. Also, an Essay on the Fugitive Law of the U. S. Congress of 1850, by Rev. Arthur Dearing. Watertown. Ingalls & Stowell's Steam Press. 1852. 285pp. 285pp.

A good + copy in original blind stamped cloth with some stains and light browning as shown; foxing on prelims and remainder of text crisp and clean. A very nicely preserved example.