He was one of colonial America's most celebrated preachers. His most significant ministry was teaching enslaved people to read using hymns as textbooks.
Samuel Davies was born in 1723 in Delaware and became one of the most significant Presbyterian voices in colonial Virginia — a man of genuine brilliance who trained Patrick Henry in oratory, served as president of what would become Princeton University, and was one of the primary architects of evangelical revivalism in the American South before the Revolution.
He is remembered for these things. He is not remembered for what he considered among his most important work.
From the time Davies arrived in Hanover County, Virginia in the late 1740s, he was deeply concerned for the spiritual welfare of the enslaved people in the communities where he ministered. He began preaching to enslaved men and women specifically, holding services for them, and quickly realized that a major barrier to their engagement with Scripture was illiteracy — deliberately enforced by a slave system that understood reading as a form of power and therefore kept it from those it intended to control.
Davies decided to teach them to read. And he chose hymns as his primary textbook.
He wrote to John Wesley in England — who had his own complicated relationship with the question of slavery — and requested that Wesley send him hymnbooks specifically for distribution to his enslaved congregation. Wesley complied. Davies distributed hundreds of copies.
The logic was simple and elegant: the enslaved men and women already had the hymns in their mouths from hearing them sung. Teaching them to decode the written words of songs they already knew connected the unfamiliar marks on the page to sounds and meanings already present in their minds.
Davies later wrote with genuine emotion about what he witnessed — people who had been kept from literacy as a matter of law and policy treating their hymnbooks as treasures, some sleeping with them, some carrying them everywhere.
Davies is remembered. They are not.
The hymns that taught them to read are still being sung.
#SamuelDavies #ChurchHistory #LesserKnownHistory #Spirituals
Samuel Davies was born in 1723 in Delaware and became one of the most significant Presbyterian voices in colonial Virginia — a man of genuine brilliance who trained Patrick Henry in oratory, served as president of what would become Princeton University, and was one of the primary architects of evangelical revivalism in the American South before the Revolution.
He is remembered for these things. He is not remembered for what he considered among his most important work.
From the time Davies arrived in Hanover County, Virginia in the late 1740s, he was deeply concerned for the spiritual welfare of the enslaved people in the communities where he ministered. He began preaching to enslaved men and women specifically, holding services for them, and quickly realized that a major barrier to their engagement with Scripture was illiteracy — deliberately enforced by a slave system that understood reading as a form of power and therefore kept it from those it intended to control.
Davies decided to teach them to read. And he chose hymns as his primary textbook.
He wrote to John Wesley in England — who had his own complicated relationship with the question of slavery — and requested that Wesley send him hymnbooks specifically for distribution to his enslaved congregation. Wesley complied. Davies distributed hundreds of copies.
The logic was simple and elegant: the enslaved men and women already had the hymns in their mouths from hearing them sung. Teaching them to decode the written words of songs they already knew connected the unfamiliar marks on the page to sounds and meanings already present in their minds.
Davies later wrote with genuine emotion about what he witnessed — people who had been kept from literacy as a matter of law and policy treating their hymnbooks as treasures, some sleeping with them, some carrying them everywhere.
Davies is remembered. They are not.
The hymns that taught them to read are still being sung.
#SamuelDavies #ChurchHistory #LesserKnownHistory #Spirituals
He was one of colonial America's most celebrated preachers. His most significant ministry was teaching enslaved people to read using hymns as textbooks.
Samuel Davies was born in 1723 in Delaware and became one of the most significant Presbyterian voices in colonial Virginia — a man of genuine brilliance who trained Patrick Henry in oratory, served as president of what would become Princeton University, and was one of the primary architects of evangelical revivalism in the American South before the Revolution.
He is remembered for these things. He is not remembered for what he considered among his most important work.
From the time Davies arrived in Hanover County, Virginia in the late 1740s, he was deeply concerned for the spiritual welfare of the enslaved people in the communities where he ministered. He began preaching to enslaved men and women specifically, holding services for them, and quickly realized that a major barrier to their engagement with Scripture was illiteracy — deliberately enforced by a slave system that understood reading as a form of power and therefore kept it from those it intended to control.
Davies decided to teach them to read. And he chose hymns as his primary textbook.
He wrote to John Wesley in England — who had his own complicated relationship with the question of slavery — and requested that Wesley send him hymnbooks specifically for distribution to his enslaved congregation. Wesley complied. Davies distributed hundreds of copies.
The logic was simple and elegant: the enslaved men and women already had the hymns in their mouths from hearing them sung. Teaching them to decode the written words of songs they already knew connected the unfamiliar marks on the page to sounds and meanings already present in their minds.
Davies later wrote with genuine emotion about what he witnessed — people who had been kept from literacy as a matter of law and policy treating their hymnbooks as treasures, some sleeping with them, some carrying them everywhere.
Davies is remembered. They are not.
The hymns that taught them to read are still being sung.
#SamuelDavies #ChurchHistory #LesserKnownHistory #Spirituals
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