Bishop Walter Hawkins: Protected by the British Lion
I was protected by the British lion, so that there was no fear of my being taken from his watchful eyes and powerful claws". Walter Hawkins, after escaping slavery and settling in Toronto, Canada.
Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada
A headline in The Echo (London), March 9, 1891, announced the visit of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada who had just arrived in England on a mission to raise funds for his black parishioners to build new churches for them in Ontario. His wife, Frances, whom he married in 1842, a few years after he escaped from slavery, accompanied him.
In London, Bishop Hawkins met S.J. Celestine and told the journalist his life story, and together they crafted the minister’s autobiography, From Slavery to a Bishopric: Or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church,
Although his years totaled 80 and his hair had turned gray, the Echo of London noted that the Bishop carried his years well and that “he is quite black, small and spare in figure, an
though so old, is still full of life and vigour.”
Like the Echo of London, the life story of Walter Hawkins echoes through the dark canyons of slavery, the tunnels of the Underground Railroad and his escape to Canada and his residence in Chatham, Ontario, to his London visit. Born in Georgetown, Maryland, in the District of Columbia about 1809 (the Cyclopedic Review of Current History, Volume 4, 1895, lists his birthday as May 12, 1808) to parents who were among the millions of black citizens stolen from their countries and brought as slaves to America, Walter Hawkins entered the world when the United States and Great Britain were seething with anti-slavery sentiment. Staunch anti-slavery Quakers convinced Walter’s father to work long hard hours to buy his freedom, but Walter and several of his siblings remained slaves.
When his master died, a slave dealer sold Walter Hawkins to Jane Robison, the sister of wealthy Virginia squire Robert Beverly, for $900.00. She bought Walter to serve as a plantation plowman, and despite his days and often, nights filled with hard physical labor, Walter used his keen intelligence to inscribe the brutal conditions of slavery on his memory. Walter especially remembered the Christian ministers like the Right Reverend Bishop Meade of Virginia and Presbyterian Parson Baulch who endorsed slavery using Biblical texts and exhorted slaves to obey their masters because God had ordained their station in life.
Throughout his autobiography, Walter Hawkins described the horrific conditions of slavery, including an account of slave chain gangs by an Englishman visiting Virginia in the early 18th century. The Englishman wrote,
"I took the boat this morning and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was a court day, and a large crowd of people were gathered about the door of the court-house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in when my ears were assailed by the voice of singing, and, turning round to discover from what direction it came, I saw a group of about thirty Negroes of different sizes and ages following a rough-looking white man who sat carelessly lolling in his sulky. They had just turned round the corner, and were coming up the main street to pass by the spot where I stood, on their way out of town.
As they came nearer, I saw some of them loaded with chains to prevent their escape, while others had hold of each other's hands, strongly grasped, as if to support themselves in their affliction. I particularly noticed a poor mother with an infant sucking at her breast as she walked along, while two small children had hold of her apron on either side, almost running to keep up with the rest. They came along singing a little wild hymn of sweet and mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of the heart, to the consolation of religion-- the last refuge of the unhappy--to support them in their distress. The sulky now stopped before a tavern, a little distance from the court-house, and the driver got out. . . then he, having supplied himself with brandy, and his horse with water (the poor Negroes, of course, wanted nothing), stepped into his chair again, cracked his whip, and drove on, while the miserable exiles followed in funeral procession behind him."
His friend S.J. Celestine Edwards* included some of Walter’s more vivid recollections of slavery in his biography/autobiography.
Around 1825, acting on his father’s advice, Walter Hawkins ran away from Jane Robison and his life of servitude on her plantation. He didn’t know which direction to take for freedom, but he kept going until he met his friend Robert, who was a free black and a Christian, and at the risk of his own life if caught, allowed Walter to stay with him for about a month. Robert and other sympathizers raised enough money to buy Walter a train ticket to Baltimore. He faced several dangers on his trip, including the necessity of presenting his non-existent papers, suspicious white slave catchers, and traveling in what he called “filthy”, blacks only railroad cars.
In the Delaware station just before the train started, two young women stepped into his compartment and Walter noted that even though they were “well-dressed and nearly white, they had to take their seat the same filthy carriage as the rest of the black passengers.” Some sources say the two well-dressed and nearly white young women were two agents from the Underground Railroad with a mission to find him and take him to safety in Philadelphia. The women told Walter that they lived in Philadelphia and they had seen the posters advertising for his capture and friends sent them to find him before someone captured him and took him back South. They offered him food from baskets they carried, which he eagerly accepted because he had been too frightened to find food outside of the train.
After Walter ate, he fell asleep and slept for the rest of the train ride to Philadelphia. Years later, he told his biographer that when he woke up, he discovered that he had been sleeping with his head in the lap of one of the women from the Underground Railroad. He said that her lap was the most comfortable pillow he had ever had in his life. As the women got up to leave, one of them turned to him and proclaimed, “You are free now.” They gave him directions to various sites in the city and told him goodbye, while he stood overwhelmed by the fact of his freedom.
Safely in Philadelphia, Walter soon found work with Walter Procter, a shoemaker, and reunited with a brother. After receiving gifts of food and clothing, Walter traveled to Buffalo, New York and took a job as a waiter. Next, he moved on to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his older brother had settled and he and other free blacks and runaways were safe. Abolitionist Quakers were also settled in New Bedford and if all of their other efforts to help runaway slaves failed, they bought them and set them free. Quakers enabled Walter and his brother Jackson to purchase their sister and she later went to live with Walter in Chatham. In New Bedford, Walter opened a grocery store and where most of his children were born. *Bishop Hawkins and His Family
* From Slavery to a Bishopric, Or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada – S. J. Celestine Edwards, John Kensit, Publisher. London, 1891.
After a few years in New Bedford, the Walter Hawkins family moved to Saratoga, New York. The 1850 United States Census shows Walter living in Florence, New York, with his wife Fanny M. and their children Laura, 7; Jackson H., 5; Charles H. 4; and Harriet F., 1. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, * requiring captured fugitive slaves to be returned to their masts with the cooperation of free states, motivated Walter to move his family to Toronto, Canada.
Although Walter Hawkins had been converted to Christianity in 1822, he didn’t have the chance to develop his faith until he escaped to Philadelphia around 1840. In Toronto in 1850, as a lay preacher, he organized the African Methodist Episcopal Congregation, where the few black Methodists worshipped with the white congregation. The entire congregation accepted him as a lay preacher, and later he was ordained in Canada. In 1856, black worshippers in Ontario formed a British Methodist Episcopal Church which accepted him as a full-time pastor for communities that many ex-slaves reached through the Underground Railroad. These communities included Brantford, 1856-1858; St. Catharines, 1858-1860; Dresden, 1860-1862; Chatham, 1862-1866; and Amherstburg, 1866-1868.
In 1868, shortly after he returned to the largest British Methodist Episcopal Church at St. Catharines, three of Bishop Hawkin’s children died one after the other. His parishioners urged him to organize a travelling choir to help strengthen his denominations finances and to help him deal with his grief. His excellent voice and outgoing personality and the songs he wrote for it guaranteed his choir a successful tour.
The British Methodist Episcopal Church respected Reverend Hawkins enough that when he advised it to decline invitations to unite with other Canadian Methodist groups in 1874, they followed his advice and declined. When the American Methodist Episcopal Church extended the same invitations in 1886, they also declined the American invitations. Ignoring the age of Bishop Hawkins, in 1890 the British Methodist Episcopal Church elected him bishop for two four-year terms. He also represented the Church at Canadian and British Methodist Conferences and his voice was so well known and appreciated that many people and organizations asked him to sing.
In 1891, Reverend Hawkins traveled to England on a speaking tour to solicit donations to help fugitives establish new lives in Ontario and to speak for Temperance.
When newspaper reporters asked him about his first impressions of England, he said, " When we
arrived in Liverpool we seemed to be in a fresh atmosphere, everything appeared so bright to us, and every hour since it has been growing brighter. Last night," he added, with a laugh, " I had to shake hands with so many kind friends that when I got to the hotel, I was obliged to have my right arm rubbed with an embrocation."
Reverend Hawkins spoke at the annual meeting of the British Temperance League at Exeter Hall, presided over by the Lord Bishop of London. He also spoke at Grosvenor House, the London residence of Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminister, at the fourth anniversary of the United Committee for the Prevention of the Demoralisation of Native Races by the Liquor Traffic. Baronets, divines, a colonial governor, Hindoos, Negroes, and crowd of ladies and gentlemen and the Duke himself presided over the meeting.
Besides expressing his pleasure at speaking at the meeting and gently teased the Duke of Westminster, Chairman of the meeting. He said:
"My Lord Duke, I find myself where I never expected to find myself. I can hardly realise it when I go back in my own mind to my past condition; and when I stand here to-day, and witness and listen to what I have seen and heard, I am almost ready to say it is a dream. My soul is filled beyond any way of expressing my feelings. Why, the word 'My Lord Duke,' I did not know the meaning of it. (Laughter.) I could not tell whether it was a man or what it was. (Loud laughter, in which the Chairman heartily joined.) I don't know what to say. It affords me great pleasure, and is an honour beyond description, to be present at this grand meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I could say what I want to say, but there is something that springs up in my throat and chokes me, so that I can hardly speak. When I received an invitation to come here, I said to my wife: 'I don't think it is true'. I read something here--'second resolution'-- 'presided over by His Grace the Duke'; but it is so, I find it is true. “
The Bishop went on to detail the Temperance efforts of his denomination in Canada to “drive the drink out of the land.”
S.J. Celestine Edwards, the Bishop’s biographer, noted that the Duchess of Westminster who sat in front of the platform gazed at the Bishop’s face and beamed as he spoke. The Bishop’s oratory style featured keen wit, biting sarcasm, quaint sayings and meaningful personal experience.
On another day, the Bishop delivered a lecture he called “Escape from Slavery”, so full of humour, pathos, and irony that people alternately laughed and cried, clapped and sat silently. After he told his stark tale of slave life, he closed with a song that he wrote called, “I’m bound for Canada.”
His friends reported that Bishop Hawkins tended to be reticent, but agreeable in private and told splendid stories with encouragement. He had a hearty laugh, and he sang remarkably well for his age. His biographer S.J. Celestine Edwards wrote that “If he had lived in the reign of Charles I, we think he would have been a Royalist, such is his intense reverence for our sovereign.”
Biographer Edwards wrote that “Bishop Hawkins has made many friends in England, and we sincerely hope that the object for which he came will be fully realised. He has done his race good both in Canada and in England; and, although we have not long known the grand old saint, we feel, as well as wish, it were in our power to do more than put this sketch of his long and eventful life together. We trust that his sanctity, firmness, good temper, and patience (which have won laurels for him in his persevering efforts for the spiritual and moral elevation of his race) will influence the younger generation of the sons of Africa wherever his life is read.” *
S.J. Celestine Edwards
S.J. Celestine Edwards (1857? –1894), the son of liberated West Indian slaves, was the publisher of Lux (1892) and Fraternity (1893). Edwards, a lay preacher, had established a national reputation before becoming the first black editor in the United Kingdom.
Bishop Hawkins and His Family
Father, Walter Hawkins died on July, 1894.
Mother, Frances Hawkins, died on October 4, 1907 at age 88.
Children
Laura, 1843-1890
William Wesley Hawkins-1857-1874
Sarah-1859-1873
Emma J. -1865-1878
They are buried with their parents in Maple Leaf Cemetery, in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. Their mother Frances Hawkins, died on October 4, 1907 at age 88.
Birth, Marriage, and Death Records of New Bedford, Massachusetts also record:
Jackson H., Born August 12, 1845 in New Bedford
Charles H., Born in New Bedford, March 30, 1847
Harriet Hawkins, Born, December 1848 in New Bedford.
They lived to adulthood.
*Abolitionists nicked named the Fugitive Slave Law the “Bloodhound Law”, after the dogs that Slave catchers and slave masters used to track down runaway slaves.
I was protected by the British lion, so that there was no fear of my being taken from his watchful eyes and powerful claws". Walter Hawkins, after escaping slavery and settling in Toronto, Canada.
Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada
A headline in The Echo (London), March 9, 1891, announced the visit of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada who had just arrived in England on a mission to raise funds for his black parishioners to build new churches for them in Ontario. His wife, Frances, whom he married in 1842, a few years after he escaped from slavery, accompanied him.
In London, Bishop Hawkins met S.J. Celestine and told the journalist his life story, and together they crafted the minister’s autobiography, From Slavery to a Bishopric: Or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church,
Although his years totaled 80 and his hair had turned gray, the Echo of London noted that the Bishop carried his years well and that “he is quite black, small and spare in figure, an
though so old, is still full of life and vigour.”
Like the Echo of London, the life story of Walter Hawkins echoes through the dark canyons of slavery, the tunnels of the Underground Railroad and his escape to Canada and his residence in Chatham, Ontario, to his London visit. Born in Georgetown, Maryland, in the District of Columbia about 1809 (the Cyclopedic Review of Current History, Volume 4, 1895, lists his birthday as May 12, 1808) to parents who were among the millions of black citizens stolen from their countries and brought as slaves to America, Walter Hawkins entered the world when the United States and Great Britain were seething with anti-slavery sentiment. Staunch anti-slavery Quakers convinced Walter’s father to work long hard hours to buy his freedom, but Walter and several of his siblings remained slaves.
When his master died, a slave dealer sold Walter Hawkins to Jane Robison, the sister of wealthy Virginia squire Robert Beverly, for $900.00. She bought Walter to serve as a plantation plowman, and despite his days and often, nights filled with hard physical labor, Walter used his keen intelligence to inscribe the brutal conditions of slavery on his memory. Walter especially remembered the Christian ministers like the Right Reverend Bishop Meade of Virginia and Presbyterian Parson Baulch who endorsed slavery using Biblical texts and exhorted slaves to obey their masters because God had ordained their station in life.
Throughout his autobiography, Walter Hawkins described the horrific conditions of slavery, including an account of slave chain gangs by an Englishman visiting Virginia in the early 18th century. The Englishman wrote,
"I took the boat this morning and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was a court day, and a large crowd of people were gathered about the door of the court-house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in when my ears were assailed by the voice of singing, and, turning round to discover from what direction it came, I saw a group of about thirty Negroes of different sizes and ages following a rough-looking white man who sat carelessly lolling in his sulky. They had just turned round the corner, and were coming up the main street to pass by the spot where I stood, on their way out of town.
As they came nearer, I saw some of them loaded with chains to prevent their escape, while others had hold of each other's hands, strongly grasped, as if to support themselves in their affliction. I particularly noticed a poor mother with an infant sucking at her breast as she walked along, while two small children had hold of her apron on either side, almost running to keep up with the rest. They came along singing a little wild hymn of sweet and mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of the heart, to the consolation of religion-- the last refuge of the unhappy--to support them in their distress. The sulky now stopped before a tavern, a little distance from the court-house, and the driver got out. . . then he, having supplied himself with brandy, and his horse with water (the poor Negroes, of course, wanted nothing), stepped into his chair again, cracked his whip, and drove on, while the miserable exiles followed in funeral procession behind him."
His friend S.J. Celestine Edwards* included some of Walter’s more vivid recollections of slavery in his biography/autobiography.
Around 1825, acting on his father’s advice, Walter Hawkins ran away from Jane Robison and his life of servitude on her plantation. He didn’t know which direction to take for freedom, but he kept going until he met his friend Robert, who was a free black and a Christian, and at the risk of his own life if caught, allowed Walter to stay with him for about a month. Robert and other sympathizers raised enough money to buy Walter a train ticket to Baltimore. He faced several dangers on his trip, including the necessity of presenting his non-existent papers, suspicious white slave catchers, and traveling in what he called “filthy”, blacks only railroad cars.
In the Delaware station just before the train started, two young women stepped into his compartment and Walter noted that even though they were “well-dressed and nearly white, they had to take their seat the same filthy carriage as the rest of the black passengers.” Some sources say the two well-dressed and nearly white young women were two agents from the Underground Railroad with a mission to find him and take him to safety in Philadelphia. The women told Walter that they lived in Philadelphia and they had seen the posters advertising for his capture and friends sent them to find him before someone captured him and took him back South. They offered him food from baskets they carried, which he eagerly accepted because he had been too frightened to find food outside of the train.
After Walter ate, he fell asleep and slept for the rest of the train ride to Philadelphia. Years later, he told his biographer that when he woke up, he discovered that he had been sleeping with his head in the lap of one of the women from the Underground Railroad. He said that her lap was the most comfortable pillow he had ever had in his life. As the women got up to leave, one of them turned to him and proclaimed, “You are free now.” They gave him directions to various sites in the city and told him goodbye, while he stood overwhelmed by the fact of his freedom.
Safely in Philadelphia, Walter soon found work with Walter Procter, a shoemaker, and reunited with a brother. After receiving gifts of food and clothing, Walter traveled to Buffalo, New York and took a job as a waiter. Next, he moved on to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his older brother had settled and he and other free blacks and runaways were safe. Abolitionist Quakers were also settled in New Bedford and if all of their other efforts to help runaway slaves failed, they bought them and set them free. Quakers enabled Walter and his brother Jackson to purchase their sister and she later went to live with Walter in Chatham. In New Bedford, Walter opened a grocery store and where most of his children were born. *Bishop Hawkins and His Family
* From Slavery to a Bishopric, Or, The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Canada – S. J. Celestine Edwards, John Kensit, Publisher. London, 1891.
After a few years in New Bedford, the Walter Hawkins family moved to Saratoga, New York. The 1850 United States Census shows Walter living in Florence, New York, with his wife Fanny M. and their children Laura, 7; Jackson H., 5; Charles H. 4; and Harriet F., 1. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, * requiring captured fugitive slaves to be returned to their masts with the cooperation of free states, motivated Walter to move his family to Toronto, Canada.
Although Walter Hawkins had been converted to Christianity in 1822, he didn’t have the chance to develop his faith until he escaped to Philadelphia around 1840. In Toronto in 1850, as a lay preacher, he organized the African Methodist Episcopal Congregation, where the few black Methodists worshipped with the white congregation. The entire congregation accepted him as a lay preacher, and later he was ordained in Canada. In 1856, black worshippers in Ontario formed a British Methodist Episcopal Church which accepted him as a full-time pastor for communities that many ex-slaves reached through the Underground Railroad. These communities included Brantford, 1856-1858; St. Catharines, 1858-1860; Dresden, 1860-1862; Chatham, 1862-1866; and Amherstburg, 1866-1868.
In 1868, shortly after he returned to the largest British Methodist Episcopal Church at St. Catharines, three of Bishop Hawkin’s children died one after the other. His parishioners urged him to organize a travelling choir to help strengthen his denominations finances and to help him deal with his grief. His excellent voice and outgoing personality and the songs he wrote for it guaranteed his choir a successful tour.
The British Methodist Episcopal Church respected Reverend Hawkins enough that when he advised it to decline invitations to unite with other Canadian Methodist groups in 1874, they followed his advice and declined. When the American Methodist Episcopal Church extended the same invitations in 1886, they also declined the American invitations. Ignoring the age of Bishop Hawkins, in 1890 the British Methodist Episcopal Church elected him bishop for two four-year terms. He also represented the Church at Canadian and British Methodist Conferences and his voice was so well known and appreciated that many people and organizations asked him to sing.
In 1891, Reverend Hawkins traveled to England on a speaking tour to solicit donations to help fugitives establish new lives in Ontario and to speak for Temperance.
When newspaper reporters asked him about his first impressions of England, he said, " When we
arrived in Liverpool we seemed to be in a fresh atmosphere, everything appeared so bright to us, and every hour since it has been growing brighter. Last night," he added, with a laugh, " I had to shake hands with so many kind friends that when I got to the hotel, I was obliged to have my right arm rubbed with an embrocation."
Reverend Hawkins spoke at the annual meeting of the British Temperance League at Exeter Hall, presided over by the Lord Bishop of London. He also spoke at Grosvenor House, the London residence of Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminister, at the fourth anniversary of the United Committee for the Prevention of the Demoralisation of Native Races by the Liquor Traffic. Baronets, divines, a colonial governor, Hindoos, Negroes, and crowd of ladies and gentlemen and the Duke himself presided over the meeting.
Besides expressing his pleasure at speaking at the meeting and gently teased the Duke of Westminster, Chairman of the meeting. He said:
"My Lord Duke, I find myself where I never expected to find myself. I can hardly realise it when I go back in my own mind to my past condition; and when I stand here to-day, and witness and listen to what I have seen and heard, I am almost ready to say it is a dream. My soul is filled beyond any way of expressing my feelings. Why, the word 'My Lord Duke,' I did not know the meaning of it. (Laughter.) I could not tell whether it was a man or what it was. (Loud laughter, in which the Chairman heartily joined.) I don't know what to say. It affords me great pleasure, and is an honour beyond description, to be present at this grand meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I could say what I want to say, but there is something that springs up in my throat and chokes me, so that I can hardly speak. When I received an invitation to come here, I said to my wife: 'I don't think it is true'. I read something here--'second resolution'-- 'presided over by His Grace the Duke'; but it is so, I find it is true. “
The Bishop went on to detail the Temperance efforts of his denomination in Canada to “drive the drink out of the land.”
S.J. Celestine Edwards, the Bishop’s biographer, noted that the Duchess of Westminster who sat in front of the platform gazed at the Bishop’s face and beamed as he spoke. The Bishop’s oratory style featured keen wit, biting sarcasm, quaint sayings and meaningful personal experience.
On another day, the Bishop delivered a lecture he called “Escape from Slavery”, so full of humour, pathos, and irony that people alternately laughed and cried, clapped and sat silently. After he told his stark tale of slave life, he closed with a song that he wrote called, “I’m bound for Canada.”
His friends reported that Bishop Hawkins tended to be reticent, but agreeable in private and told splendid stories with encouragement. He had a hearty laugh, and he sang remarkably well for his age. His biographer S.J. Celestine Edwards wrote that “If he had lived in the reign of Charles I, we think he would have been a Royalist, such is his intense reverence for our sovereign.”
Biographer Edwards wrote that “Bishop Hawkins has made many friends in England, and we sincerely hope that the object for which he came will be fully realised. He has done his race good both in Canada and in England; and, although we have not long known the grand old saint, we feel, as well as wish, it were in our power to do more than put this sketch of his long and eventful life together. We trust that his sanctity, firmness, good temper, and patience (which have won laurels for him in his persevering efforts for the spiritual and moral elevation of his race) will influence the younger generation of the sons of Africa wherever his life is read.” *
S.J. Celestine Edwards
S.J. Celestine Edwards (1857? –1894), the son of liberated West Indian slaves, was the publisher of Lux (1892) and Fraternity (1893). Edwards, a lay preacher, had established a national reputation before becoming the first black editor in the United Kingdom.
Bishop Hawkins and His Family
Father, Walter Hawkins died on July, 1894.
Mother, Frances Hawkins, died on October 4, 1907 at age 88.
Children
Laura, 1843-1890
William Wesley Hawkins-1857-1874
Sarah-1859-1873
Emma J. -1865-1878
They are buried with their parents in Maple Leaf Cemetery, in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. Their mother Frances Hawkins, died on October 4, 1907 at age 88.
Birth, Marriage, and Death Records of New Bedford, Massachusetts also record:
Jackson H., Born August 12, 1845 in New Bedford
Charles H., Born in New Bedford, March 30, 1847
Harriet Hawkins, Born, December 1848 in New Bedford.
They lived to adulthood.
*Abolitionists nicked named the Fugitive Slave Law the “Bloodhound Law”, after the dogs that Slave catchers and slave masters used to track down runaway slaves.