Terry,

A great deal of the writing on slavery in the 1970s and '80s deals with
black folklore and folk religion, see Genovese, Lawrence Levine, Albert
Raboteau. Most directly relevant for you might be: Mechal Sobel, *The World
They Made together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia.*

Jim Hershman

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 8:24 AM Meyers, Terry L <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> In working on the Williamsburg Bray school and the religious education of
> local Blacks, I’ve had in mind not only the Anglican mission of the school
> (and of William and Mary, which helped to oversee the school) but also the
> concurrent development of the First Baptist Church.  Both, of course,
> embodied mainstream Christian belief.
>
> But I’ve stumbled across a forgotten account of Williamsburg life that
> seems to suggest a different system of belief.  In _Random Recollections_
> (privately printed; 1905), Beverley Munford recounts over several pages his
> exposure (seemingly in the 1860’s) to Black beliefs different from
> Christianity:
>
> Before the glowing wood - fires on their hearthstones I would sit and
> listen to the conversations of the old " Uncles " and " Aunts , " as I was
> taught to call them , while they recounted their religious experiences ,
> their stores of superstition and folk - lore , or told weird stories of
> what they had seen and heard in the shadowy land of ghosts and “ hants . ”
> I thus learned how they regarded what they called " white folks ' religion
> " -a system , they averred , de- rived from books , while theirs came by
> direct revelation from on High to every soul which had successively ex-
> perienced the trials and triumphs of " conviction , " seeking " and "
> coming through . “
> (p. 32)
>
> From:
> https://books.google.com/books?id=5SwTAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions
>
> My guess is that these beliefs were likely current too in earlier times.
>
> Is there a good academic study/history of any such tradition in Virginia
> of what Munford describes?
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of
> William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg  23187
>
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