Abney Park Cemetery Trust:

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Please note this page was written during 2007 under the title ''Anti-slavery Writings Remembered in 2007: nonconformists and abolitionists at Abney Park''

We will soon be replacing this with a new page highlighting the African Diaspora. This will cover a selection of famous people of African descent who have memorials and monuments at Abney Park.

Our free leaflet 'ABOLITION: Voices from Abney Park' is available at the Visitors Centre.

Introduction: 2007 is the year in which the history of enslavement is being remembered and reconsidered throughout Britain. There are many different perspectives on enslavement and its history; including various histories of abolition and freedom movements and their leaders in European, Asian, Middle Eastern, American and African communities throughout the world, and issues of legacy in countries such as Sierra Leone.

Part of this history, is the history of movements established by English and African nonconformists and other evangelicals taking forwards, and influenced by, the religious revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This sought to establish that everyone was equal before God; an idea which became a powerful force against misrule in many countries by small elites and merchants.

One aspect of this evangelical movement that is well represented at Abney Park is the role of the nondenominational London Missionary Society and Jamaican and English baptist missions, who aimed to establish reading skills, schools, and health facilities and encourage religious organisation. For example, the nonconformist African-Caribbean pastor to the Cameroons, the Rev. Joseph Jackson Fuller, is buried at Abney Park.

Of particular importance also was the 'original narrative' or 'Anti-slavery Writings'- books and publications written by African-American or African-Caribbean authors to promote abolition by informing the English-speaking world - encouraging legal changes by using first hand accounts.

A little chink of this complex history, and especially the significance of anti-slavery writings by African-Caribbean and African-Americans, relates to Abney Park, and its resources. Abney Park is non-denominational, but throughout the nineteenth century its use for burial was especially popular amongst evangelical 'independents' or nonconformists.

It is being discovered that Abney Park has many important burials of people who were active in slavery abolition in the decades after the first Parliamentary Acts in Britain of 1807-8. The park has links to those in America and the Caribbean whose own experience of slavery shaped the movement and underpinned its growth. The cemetery has a particularly strong link between its English Baptists and the pioneer African Baptists, who worked together to develop missions and schools in Jamaica, and to abolish slavery in Jamaica on 1 August 1838.

Joanna Vassa: Of special importance is Olaudah Equiano's daughter, Joanna Vassa , her father being possibly the most influential African slavery emancipator of the period leading up to the initial 1807-8 Acts in Britain that prohibited the transatlantic trade and set out a gradual process for abolition itself and the growth of Freetown in Sierra Leone. 2007 is the 150th anniversary of Joanna's death as well as being the bicentenary of the first abolition Act of the British Parliament, which her father campaigned for.

Jamaican Emancipation: Jamaican emancipation in the 1830s and 1840s is well represented at Abney Park Cemetery because of the strong Baptist connections of both Jamaica and Abney Park Cemetery. The Jamaican Baptist mission was founded by Aficans freed from slavery in the southern states of America. Two prominent English Baptist missionaries and Abolitionists who sought to further their work in Jamaica were the  Rev Samuel Oughton  and   Rev. Thomas Burchell and both are buried at Abney Park. Philantropic Baptist supporters for these, and other missionaries and abolitionists such as notably William Knibb, is represented by the most prominent of all monuments (besides the statue to the life of Dr Isaac Watts) - the only mausoleum permitted in Abney Park -  to Nathaniel Rogers M.D. Burchell's rebuilt Baptist church is today preserved by the Jamaican Heritage Trust ; the original chapel was destroyed by a mob of slave-owners after the Christmas Rebellion, Thomas Burchell only escaping death by securing sanctuary out on-board a ship in the harbour. It is worth remembering that although Burchell was prosecuted for fomenting rebellion, he survived. The heroic African-Carribean Sam Sharpe, Jamaican National Hero , Deacon in Burchell's church, was hanged in the square that now bears his name. The link bewteen the Baptists and the anti-slavery movement in Jamaica was intrinsic to the origins of Baptist work in Jamaica. Their work in the country was started by George Lisle , an emancipated slave born in Virginia. He preached first on the racecource at Kingston where the novelty of a black, itinerant preacher and ex-slave attracted much attention. Having gathered a congregation he sought support from Baptists in England.

South Seas and South America In addition to the abolitionists mentioned above, the Secretary of the Anti-slavery Society, Rev Aaron Buzacott BA, son of a prominent South Seas missionary and author of the same name, is buried at Abney Park Cemetery [today Anti-Slavery International (formerly called the Anti-Slavery Society) is a research and campaigning organisation based in London, originally founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839]. Also buried here is the Rev. Joseph Kelley whose contribution to the abolition of slavery was in Demerara (Guyana), the scene of one of the largest slave uprisings in a British colony, during the early 1820s, which reinvigorated the painfully slow pace of abolition, and brought the London Missionary Society into direct conflict with the colonial government and plantation owners.

Anti-slavery Writings & Autobiographies - Support in Hackney: Several Nonconformist ministers buried at Abney Park assisted the influential anti-slavery writings and autobiographies of African-Americans who escaped to find freedom and campaign against slavery. Frederick Douglas , escaped enslavement in America, and travelled to England where he gained strong support from abolitionists and worked fearlessly to encourage abolition in America. Rev Dr Alexander Fletcher , who is buried near Church Street lent his Independent Chapel, Finsbury Chapel, in the City of London for Frederick Douglas's highly publicised reception speech in London in 1856 which greatly furthered the abolitionist cause. The reply to Frederick Douglas on behalf of Londons Dissenting ministers was given by Dr John Campbell who is buried at Abney Park. Rev. Alexander Fletcher had previously lent his independent chapel to Moses Roper , (an African American who escaped enslavement in the American South) for his second influential London speech of May 1836 (Moses' first large-scale public speech having been at Thomas Price's Baptist Chapel, Devonshire Square). Moses used these platforms to publicise his forthcoming book 'A narrative of the Adventure and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery' which did much to promote the anti-slavery cause. One of Moses' main patrons in England, Rev Dr John Morison (d.1859) editor of the Evangelical Magazine, is buried at Abney Park (as is also another of his patrons -the Rev Fletcher - Moses had travelled to England from America with papers of introduction to Dr Morrison and Dr Fletcher.

The Rev. Christopher Newman Hall is also buried here with his father. He was influential on the side of slavery emancipation in the American Civil War of the 1860s. He took over at Surrey Chapel from the staunchly abolitionist Rev. James Sherman who, amongst other campaining, wrote the introduction to the first edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential American anti-slavery book 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the book that Abraham Lincoln regarded as having started the American Civil War and resulted in abolition in the southern states (James Sherman was a founder trustee of Abney Park Cemetery). The novel was partly based on Josiah Henson, whose celebrated escape to freedom in Britain and work towards abolition was very influential. His friendship with the philanthropist Samuel Morley - who is buried at Abney Park Cemetery, is recorded in his autobiography, and Josiah Henson invited Samuel Morley to contribute the co-introductory note to this autobiography.

Other Links: At Abney Park Cemetery there are also some of the early settlers in Britain from the four corners of the world, such as the African Thomas Caulker the son of the King of Bompey (now part of Sierra Leone) who, in the 1850s signed an agreement with the British government to allow naval ships to intercept those from his kingdom, to ensure they were not being used by merchants trading in slaves; and Leota, a native of the Samoa Islands whose life in London was made possible through the work of the non-denominational but largely nonconformist London Missionary Society, who sought to build schools and bring scripture to the inhabitants of the South Seas. Here, for example is the burial place of such missionary luminaries as William Ellis , John Williams wife and son, and Dr Medhurst .

Dr Thomas Binney , the 'Archbishop of Nonconformity' is buried close to the Church Street entrance in Abney Park Cemetery. There is a painting in the National Portrait Gallery that shows him attending the Anti-slavery Society Convention in London, 1840 with several other metropolitan dissenting ministers now also buried in Abney Park, and African-Caribbean delegates from Jamaica and Haiti ; this was the first international meeting of the organisation that is today campaigning against slavery worldwide under the name ''Anti-slavery International''

Overall, Abney Park is one of the main place of interest in London for studying the history of the links between religious dissent or nonconformity and slavery abolition. Part derives from its eighteenth and early nineteenth century links with dissenters, including Dr Isaac Watts , Lady Abney and the Quaker and philanthropist William Allen . However, much more derives from its significance, as the principal nineteenth century burial place for nonconformist ministers and missionaries in London.

If you or your group would like to use the resources at Abney Park, please contact the Trust about use of our facilities, or come and visit !

If you would like to make a donation, we would most like your financial support to fund:

(i) the restoration in Abney Park of the monument and memorial to Olaudah Equiano's daughter Joanna Vassa ; or

(ii) a donation to Africa e.g. GardenAfrica charity .


Further Notes: Stoke Newington, Religious Dissent & Abolition

In the early eighteenth century Abney Park was the home of Lady Mary Abney , and her chaplain Dr Isaac Watts . They had strong links to the 'religious revival' of the period which played an influential part in originating a movement for the abolition of slavery from a religious perspective.

Stoke Newington was a strong centre of religious dissent, particularly for the Quakers, who were the original founders of the first petition to Parliament against the slave trade. Quakers could not sit in the British Parliament at that time - the late 1700s - and being unable to change British law directly, they formed a small group (which included two prominent Stoke Newington Quakers - Samuel Hoare Jr and Joseph Woods Sr) to attract Anglican members and establish the non-denominational 'Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade'.

William Wilberforce was an important find for these early Quaker abolitionists. He shared many of the evangelical beliefs that had led them to act, and as an Anglican and part of the ruling elite, was eligible to sit in Britain's unreformed Parliament of the time (less than 10% of men, and no women at all, could vote before 1832), lobby MPs on a daily basis, and persistently put forwards abolition legislation albeit defeated time and again. Wilberforce's son-in-law, the abolitionist lawyer James Stephen was a frequent visitor to Stoke Newington, his father living at the Fleetwood House Summerhouse, at Abney Park. James Stephen, his parents, and two wives are all buried at Old St Mary's Church in Stoke Newington. Wilberforce also planned to be buried in a vault at Old St Mary's Church in Stoke Newington - his sister and eldest daughter are buried there. However, his will was overturned on his death, since Parliament considered a state funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey more fitting.

If you have further information, or would like to comment on this page, please write to: David Solman-Neoh

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