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A Southern White Clergyman, the Freed People, and the Nineteenth-Century Episcopal Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2023
Abstract
Reared in antebellum South Carolina, Peter Fayssoux Stevens was a typical white southerner until Reconstruction. He came of age in the 1840s and 1850s and fought for the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War. Before his military service commenced in 1861, he was ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church (PEC) of North America. After Appomattox, as Black communicants deserted white Protestant churches in droves, Stevens believed that they might return to the PEC if they could choose their leaders and decide fundamental questions affecting their parishes. When white church leaders refused to follow Stevens’s recommendations, he left the PEC and joined the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). He spent more than four decades after the war ministering to Black communicants. Although Stevens was not a champion of civil rights, his career provides a compelling case study of a white clergyman who evolved from a traditional southerner and zealous Confederate soldier to an advocate for Black communicants in the church.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust
Footnotes
†
Loren B. Mead (1930–2018) is deceased. He was a retired Episcopal Priest and founder of the Alban Institute.
References
1 Gary L. Baker, Cadets in Gray: The Story of the Cadets of the South Carolina Military Academy and the Cadet Rangers in the Civil War (Columbia, SC: Palmetto Bookworks, 1989), pp. 12-13, 23-24, 27, 36. See also Peter Fayssoux Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, unpublished manuscript, n.d., handwritten copy, DuPre-Moseley Family Collection, the Kennedy Room of Local History and Genealogy, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, South Carolina, especially pp. 93-94.
2 Marion Stevens Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, unpublished manuscript, December 1979, typescript copy, Citadel Archives, pp. 17-20; ‘Colored Ministers Will Act at Rev. P.F. Stevens Burial; Body of Leader in Reformed Episcopal Church, Who Died Sunday, Will Sleep in Magnolia’, The State [Columbia, South Carolina], January 11, 1910, n.p.
3 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 1, 11. See also Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 3; Hurley E. Badders, Remembering South Carolina’s Old Pendleton District (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006), pp. 78, 80.
4 In his autobiography, Stevens only briefly commented on the financial condition of his family after he, his mother and siblings left Florida. (He never mentioned the number of enslaved persons laboring at Chapofo before their departure.) Stevens observed that ‘Col. James Gadsden [a family friend] became the Executor of my father’s estate and the guardian of us all. Whether he was in Florida or in Charleston I do not know, but he certainly was a friend to the widow and the fatherless. At first his remittances to Mother were larger but after the first two or three years they amounted to about $300 a year. Mother lived within the narrow income teaching us all to hate debt and giving us an education nevertheless.’ Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 26. Earlier in his autobiography, Stevens included a passing reference to ‘Old Maurice the colored driver’, but he did not mention other enslaved persons. Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 23. The implication was that the enslaved persons who labored at Chapofo were sold to provide funds for the estate. Other than Maurice, the family apparently did not own enslaved persons in Pendleton. Nonetheless, Stevens and his family were well acquainted with slavery, and were not averse to the institution during the antebellum years. See also Badders, Remembering, pp. 79, 82; Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 3-4.
5 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 21-22, 37-38. See also Badders, Remembering, pp. 81-82.
6 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 39. See also Badders, Remembering, p. 85; Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 4.
7 See, for example, Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 1; John Peyre Thomas, The History of the South Carolina Military Academy, with Appendices (Charleston, SC: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co., 1893), pp. 12-34. On Demark Vesey, see, for example, David Robertson, Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), pp. 115, 149; Michael P. Johnson, ‘Denmark Vesey and his Co-Conspirators’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 58.4 (October 2001), pp. 915-76.
8 Official Register of the Officers and Cadets at the South Carolina Military Academies, The Citadel Archives & Museum, https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/3, 1849. See also Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 58, 62; Thomas, History, pp. 34-64.
9 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 62-63.
10 Thomas, History, pp. 66, 67.
11 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 65-67; See also Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 4-5. Mary’s brother, Ellison Capers, later became a brigadier general in the Confederate Army as well as a college professor and Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina from 1894 until his death in 1908. Colonel O.J. Bond, The Story of the Citadel (Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1936), pp. 52-53.
12 The quote is found in Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 67. See also pp. 68-69. Stevens’s family life is recounted in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 3-5.
13 The quote is found in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 5.
14 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 68-69.
15 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 69.
16 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 70. See also Badders, Remembering, pp. 90-91; Thomas, History, pp. 85, 86, 92-93, 98, 99, 100; Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 5.
17 Petigrue is quoted in many sources. See, for example, Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), p. 230. See also Charles H. Lesser, Relic of the Lost Cause: The Story of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession (2nd edn; Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2012), p. 3.
18 The story of Major Anderson’s decision to move from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter is discussed in many sources. See, for example, David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, 2001), pp. 55-64.
19 Baker, Cadets in Gray, pp. 12-13, 23-24, 27, 36; Bond, The Story of the Citadel, pp. 49-52; Detzer, Allegiance, pp. 55-64, 100-101, 148; Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 93-94.
20 Beauregard’s order is quoted in Bond, The Story of the Citadel, p. 52. See also Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 36.
21 Bond, The Story of the Citadel, p. 52.
22 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 100. See also Badders, Remembering, p. 97; Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 41; Thomas, History, p. 259.
23 The resolution is quoted in Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 41. See also Thomas, History, pp. 110, 111.
24 Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, p. 101. See also Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 6-7. For more on Port Royal, see, for example, James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), pp. 370-71.
25 Georganne B. Burton and Orville Vernon Burton, ‘Lucy Holcombe Pickens, Southern Writer’, The South Carolina Historical Magazine 103.4 (October 2002), pp. 296, 309. See also Badders, Remembering, pp. 108-109; Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 41; Bond, Story of the Citadel, p. 52; C. Eugene Scruggs, Tramping with the Legion: A Carolina Rebel’s Story (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2006), p. 87; Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 101-102.
26 Ralph E. Luker, ‘The Crucible of Civil War and Reconstruction in the Experience of William Porcher Dubose’, The South Carolina Historical Magazine 83.1 (January 1982), p. 53; Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 102-103. See also Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command (New York: Scribner, 1998 [1940]), pp. 83-84; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 341; Scruggs, Tramping with the Legion, pp. 116-17.
27 Mary Stevens is quoted in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 7. See also Baker, Cadets in Gray, pp. 41-42; Bond, Story of the Citadel, p. 52; Scruggs, Tramping with the Legion, p. 146; Luker, ‘The Crucible’, pp. 54-56; Stevens, ‘Autobiography’, pp. 103-106.
28 Peter Fayssoux Stevens to Nell [the family’s name for Stevens’s daughter, Helen Capers DuPre], April 14, 1902, Correspondence 1902 file, DuPre-Moseley Family Collection, the Kennedy Room of Local History and Genealogy, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, South Carolina.
29 The quotes are found in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 8. See also Scruggs, Tramping with the Legion, p. 147; Baker, Cadets in Gray, p. 42.
30 Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 68, 96.
31 Albert Sidney Thomas, A Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 1820–1957 (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 1957), p. 12.
32 Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, & Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 165-66. See also Mark Mohler, ‘The Episcopal Church and National Reconciliation, 1865’, Political Science Quarterly 41.4 (December 1926), p. 568; William Kaufman Scarborough, Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders in the Mid-Nineteenth Century South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), pp. 2-3, 53-54; Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 129-31. Because figures on religious affiliation are not always exact, the numbers should be used with caution.
33 See, for example, T. Felder Dorn, Challenges on the Emmaus Road: Episcopal Bishops Confront Slavery, Civil War, and Emancipation (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), pp. 87-88. Scholars have debated the reasons why many Episcopalians did not engage on the slavery issue, with some commentators arguing that it was a matter of the denomination’s ideology – ‘the church was meant to be in this world, but not of it’ – while others have contended that it was simply a pragmatic concern. The church was still recovering from reverses dating back to the American Revolution. Stirring up the slavery issue, especially when so many of the planter elite attended the Protestant Episcopal Church in the South, was a recipe for strife and division. See, for example, Thomas Strange, ‘Alexander Crummell and the Anti-Slavery Dilemma of the Episcopal Church’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70.4 (October 2019), pp. 768-70.
34 Bishop Gadsden is quoted in Dorn, Challenges on the Emmaus Road, p. 33. See also Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr., Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), pp. 7-8.
35 Frederick Dalcho, An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina: 1670–1820 (New York: Arno Press, 1970 [1820]), pp. 94-95; Edgar, South Carolina, p. 293. See also Luther P. Jackson, ‘Religious Instruction of Negroes, 1830–1860, with Special Reference to South Carolina’, The Journal of Negro History 15.1 (January 1930), pp. 75, 82.
36 The pastoral letter is quoted in Dorn, Challenges on the Emmaus Road, p. 32. See also Edgar, South Carolina, p. 293.
37 The figures are reported in two sources: J. Carleton Hayden, ‘After the War: The Mission and Growth of the Episcopal Church Among Blacks in the South, 1865–1877’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 42.4 (December 1973), pp. 403-404; Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 47. Their numbers match with one exception. Hayden reported the increase in white communicants from 1936 to 2965 between 1840 and 1850 while Thomas reported the increase from 1936 to 2659.
38 Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race, pp. 7-9; Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 33. See also J. Carleton Hayden, ‘Conversion and Control: Dilemma of Episcopalians in Providing for the Religious Instructions of Slaves, Charleston, South Carolina, 1845–1860’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 40.2 (June 1971), p. 147. On the pew rental system in the antebellum Protestant Episcopal Church, see, for example, Jennifer Snow, ‘The Altar and the Rail: “Catholicity” and African American Inclusion in the 19th Century Episcopal Church’, Religions 12.224 (March 2021), p. 5.
39 Edgar, South Carolina, pp. 294-95; Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race, pp. 7-9.
40 The quotes are found in Strange, ‘Alexander Crummell and the Anti-Slavery Dilemma of the Episcopal Church’, pp. 773-74. Pyne’s language was too intemperate and his message too blunt for his own good. Leaders removed him from his church.
41 Robert E.L. Bearden Jr., ‘The Episcopal Church in the Confederate States’, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 4.4 (Winter 1945), pp. 269-75; Ronald James Caldwell, A History of the Episcopal Church Schism in South Carolina (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), pp. 15-16.
42 Bishop Davis is quoted in Edgar Legare Pennington, ‘The Organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 17.4 (December 1948), p. 313. See also Raymond W. Albright, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 252, 254; Caldwell, A History, p. 16.
43 Albright, A History, p. 252; Caldwell, A History, p. 16; Pennington, ‘Organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church’, pp. 314-23; Walter B. Posey, ‘The Protestant Episcopal Church: An American Adaptation’, The Journal of Southern History 25.1 (February 1959), p. 29; Harry T. Shanks, ‘The Reunion of the Episcopal Church, 1865’, Church History 9.2 (June 1940), p. 120; Mohler, ‘The Episcopal Church and National Reconciliation, 1865’, pp. 571-72; Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race, pp. 9-10.
44 Caldwell, A History, p. 16; Mohler, ‘The Episcopal Church’, pp. 575-79, 585-86; Shanks, ‘The Reunion’, p. 121. For more details on the reconciliation, see, for example, Albright, A History, pp. 253-55.
45 Bishop Davis is quoted in Caldwell, A History, p. 16. See also Mohler, ‘The Episcopal Church’, pp. 576-77; Shanks, ‘The Reunion’, pp. 126-27, 139; Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race, pp. 10-11; Gaines M. Foster, ‘Bishop Cheshire and Black Participation in the Episcopal Church: The Limitations of Religious Paternalism’, The North Carolina Historical Review 54.1 (January 1977), pp. 49-50.
46 Caldwell, A History, pp. 16-17; Mohler, ‘The Episcopal Church’, pp. 588-89; Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race, pp. 8-9; Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 68.
47 Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 10.
48 Caldwell, A History, pp. 16-17. See also George Freeman Bragg, D.D., The Episcopal Church and the Black Man (Baltimore, MD: Self-published, 1918); George Freeman Bragg, D.D., History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore, MD: Church Advocate Press, 1922), p. 128; Herbert Geer McCarriar Jr., ‘A History of the Missionary Jurisdiction of the South of the Reformed Episcopal Church 1874–1970’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 41.2 (June 1972), pp. 197-220; Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 385; John Gary Eichelberger Jr., ‘Caught in an “Evil Infection”: Postbellum Conflict in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina over the Role of African Americans in the Life of the Church’ (master’s thesis, University of the South, 2020), p. 28.
49 Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 219-20.
50 Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 10-11.
51 Stevens is quoted in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 12.
52 Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 221; McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 200-201.
53 Bishop Davis is quoted in Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 448.
54 Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 404.
55 The quote is found in Thomas, A Historical Account, p. 89. See also Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 220.
56 The quote is found in Lyon G. Tyler, ‘Drawing the Color Line in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, 1876–1890: The Role of Edward McCrady, Father and Son’, The South Carolina Historical Magazine 91.2 (April 1990), p. 108.
57 Tyler, ‘Drawing the Color Line’, pp. 107-24. See also David M. Reimers, ‘Negro Bishops and Diocesan Segregation in the Protestant Episcopal Church: 1870–1954’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 31.3 (September 1962), p. 232.
58 The literature on this point is voluminous. See, for example, Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (15th anniversary edn; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 434; Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 233; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), pp. 104-106; C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim (2nd edn; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 54-58.
59 Dabney is quoted in Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 220.
60 Peter Fayssoux Stevens to Frank C. Ferguson, March 2, 1874, Correspondence 1874 file, DuPre-Moseley Family Collection, the Kennedy Room of Local History and Genealogy, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, South Carolina. See also Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 221.
61 McCarriar, ‘A History’, p. 198. See also Annie Price Darling, A History of the Formation and Growth of the Reformed Episcopal Church, 1873–1902 (Philadelphia, PA: James M. Armstrong, 1902), pp. 56-62.
62 Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, pp. 274, 275.
63 Rev. Benjamin Johnson in Journal of the Proceedings of the Fourth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in Emmanuel Church, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Commencing Wednesday, July 12, and Ending Monday, July 17, 1876, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1876), p. 55; Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 223.
64 Stevens is quoted in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 13. Bishop Howe and many Episcopal clergy in South Carolina supported allowing Black laymen and clergy to join the church and participate, for example, in the diocesan convention. Howe set forth his position in Rt. Rev. W.B.W. Howe, ‘Paper’, in Authorized Report of the Proceedings of the Eighth Church Congress in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, Held in the City of Richmond, Virginia, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, October 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th, 1882 (ed. Committee on the Publication Appointed by the Executive Committee; New York: Thomas Whittaker, Publisher, Nos. 2 and 3, Bible House, 1882), pp. 83-90. As discussed previously, many of the laity did not agree with this position, which severely limited church leaders’ options. Tyler, ‘Drawing the Color Line’, p. 107.
65 Peter Fayssoux Stevens to editors of The Record, August 23, 1875, Correspondence 1875 file, DuPre-Moseley Family Collection, the Kennedy Room of Local History and Genealogy, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, South Carolina.
66 Stevens is quoted in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 14, 16.
67 Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in the Chapel of the Second Reformed Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, PA, Commencing Wednesday, May 9, and Ending Tuesday, May 15, 1877, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1876), pp. 22, 31. See also Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, p. 223; McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 203-204.
68 The quote was provided by Benjamin Aycrigg, a REC founding layman and historiographer of the church, who claimed to be quoting Bishop Cummins. The quote is reproduced in McCarriar, ‘A History’, p. 205.
69 McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 203, 205.
70 Benjamin Aycrigg, Memoirs of the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Contemporary Reports Respecting these and The Church of England, Extracted from the Public Press, Analysed and Compared with Proven History (New York: William Jenkin Company, 1880), p. 260.
71 Bishop Fallows’s report is found in Journal of the Proceedings of the Sixth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in Emmanuel Church, Newark, New Jersey, Commencing Wednesday, May 8, and Ending Monday, May 13, 1878, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1878), p. 45.
72 Luker, ‘The Crucible’, pp. 66-68; McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 199-203; Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999 [1971]), pp. 72, 115-17, 349, 353; Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 55-59.
73 Journal of the Proceedings of the Seventh General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in Christ Church, Chicago, Illinois, Commencing Wednesday, May 28th, and Ending Wednesday, June 4 th, 1879, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1879), p. 36.
74 Bishop William Rufus Nicholson to Peter Fayssoux Stevens, June 7, 1879, Correspondence 1879 file, DuPre-Moseley Family Collection, the Kennedy Room of Local History and Genealogy, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, South Carolina. See also Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in the First Reformed Episcopal Church in New York City, Commencing Wednesday, May 25th, and Ending Monday, May 30 th, 1881, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1881), pp. 30, 41; Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 18; McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 207-208; Darling, A History, pp. 241-42.
75 Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, pp. 41-43; McCarriar, ‘A History’, pp. 209-10.
76 Journal of the Proceedings of the Twelfth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in the First Reformed Episcopal Church, Boston, Commencing Wednesday, May 22nd, and Ending Monday, May 27, 1889, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1889), pp. 72, 73.
77 Journal of the Proceedings of the Fourteenth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in Christ Church, Chicago, Illinois, Commencing Wednesday, June 6th, and Ending Monday, June 11 th, 1894, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1894), p. 121.
78 Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 19.
79 Stevens is quoted in McCarriar, ‘A History’, p. 215. See also Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 19; Journal of the Proceedings of the Seventeenth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in St. Paul’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, Commencing Wednesday, May 20th, and Ending Monday, May 25, 1903, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James M. Armstrong, 1903), pp. 58-59.
80 The quote is found in Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, p. 19. See also Journal of the Proceedings of the Thirteenth General Counsel of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Held in the Church of the Epiphany, Cleveland, Ohio, Commencing Wednesday, May 27th, and Ending Monday, June 1, 1891, Published by Order of the Council (Philadelphia: James A. Moore, 1891), p. 80; ‘Colored Ministers Will Act at Rev. P. F. Stevens Burial’, n.p.; Blinzy L. Gore, On a Hilltop High: The Origin and History of Claflin College to 1984 (Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Company, 1994), p. 112; Thomas, History, pp. 303-28.
81 ‘Colored Ministers Will Act at Rev. P. F. Stevens Burial’, n.p.; Eberly, ‘Our Stevens Family’, pp. 19-20.
82 ‘Colored Ministers Will Act at Rev. P. F. Stevens Burial’, n.p.