William Killick - George Liele's Protege

 

George Liele, pioneer Baptist missionary to Jamaica, arrived in Jamaica in January,1783, and he breathed his last around 1826, three years after he had returned from a visit to England. Despite the time he spent in prison and on his visit to England, Liele had a direct influence on virtually every single leader of the early Baptist movement in Jamaica, including those whom we have celebrated earlier in this blog. Today, we feature another person, William Killick (or Kellick), who came under the influence of George Liele and who eventually became pastor of Liele’s church in Kingston.

 
Liele administered Killick’s baptism in 1801 and ten years later, Liele presided at Killick’s ordination to the ministry. In later years, Parson Killick, as he was affectionately called, assumed the pastorate of the Windward Road Baptist Chapel. Killick also pastored congregations in the parishes of St Catherine, St David’s, and St Thomas in the East. According to statistics assembled by the Native Baptist Missionary Society, in 1841, more than 4,000 persons enjoyed membership in churches Killick served – 179 at Bethany Church in St David’s (a parish which was absorbed into the parish of St Thomas in 1866), 357 at Bethel Chapel in Morant Bay in St Thomas in the East and 3,700 at the Windward Road Chapel.
 
Such was Killick’s reputation and the desperation of the government of the day that Killick received support from the State both to erect his worship centre in Bethany and to repair his church building in St Thomas in the East. According to Edward Bean Underhill, one-time Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society and founder of the Hanserd Knollys Society for the publication of works by early Baptist writers, 30 years after Killick became a minister in 1811, “the [Jamaican] House of Assembly, impressed with the work he was doing, gave him a grant of £200 for repairs and additions to his chapel [Windward Road Chapel], while the Corporation of Kingston gave a further £100.”
 
Nor was the government the only entity that appreciated Killick’s ministry. Richard Madden, one of the six Special Magistrates whom the British government sent to Jamaica in 1834 to investigate the operation of the apprenticeship system, reported that, during his stay in Jamaica, he had opportunity to observe Killick’s ministry. In a letter to friends in England, he described Killick as “a pious, well-behaved, honest man, who in point of intelligence, and the application of Scriptural knowledge to the ordinary duties of his calling, might stand a comparison with many more highly favoured by the advantages of their education and standing in society.”
 
Killick was included in the list of persons said to have been associated with the Native Baptist Missionary Society. He served the treasurer of that Society and a member of its Executive Committee. So prominent was Killick that, in the 1900s, the Windward Road Chapel was popularly referred to as Killick’s or Kellick’s or Kellet’s Native Baptist Church.
 
Especially after Killick’s passing sometime after 1864, his church experienced deep divisions that put its continuing ministry at risk. Indeed, from early on, various leaders who served as pastor of the Windward Road Chapel had to face controversial moments. The exclusion of Swigle in 1801 was one such moment. In 1822, when Liele was preparing to travel to England to explore whether the British Baptist Missionary Society might agree to commission him a missionary to Jamaica – according to one researcher – thereby enabling him to continue his ministry in Jamaica with less adverse intervention by the State, his church decided to invite the Baptist Missionary Joshua Tinson to act as pastor during Liele’s absence. When Liele returned to Jamaica, controversy erupted over his resumption of the pastorate. This resulted in several of the church members leaving their historic church and joining their once-interim pastor, Joshua Tinson, to form the Hanover Street Baptist Church. The Windward Road church was no stranger to leadership crisis.
 
Leadership troubles continued to negatively affect Killick’s Church. The church’s trustees experienced deep divisions that led them to make frequent use of the law courts in a bid to continue to exert their will over the church.
 
The church was led by a succession of ministers including Robert Graham and Gabriel E. Stewart. Graham was ordained in 1845. British Baptist missionary John Clarke reports that Graham, a former member of the leadership team at Windward Road Chapel, accompanied Tinson to Hanover Street church where he served as a deacon. While at the Hanover Street Church, Graham and Tinson had a disagreement over Tinson’s desire to train Graham in English grammar and proper pronunciation. Graham maintained that, although he believed Mr. Tinson’s way of pronouncing words was the way in England, he was sure his method was not only the Jamaican method, but also the way best understood by the people. The two men had deep respect for each other but they could find no agreement over these matters. Another minister of the Liele's church was the Rev. Gabriel Stewart, who is the subject of the next blog post.
 
The perpetual conflict at Killick’s Church made no small contribution to the eventual demise of the church. In the archives of the Gleaner newspaper, one finds numerous stories of the leaders of the Windward Road Chapel taking each other to court, which had a destabilising effect on the church and contributed to undermining the church’s ministry. 
 
On April 15, 1918, trustees of Killick’s Church were before the law courts. According to a report in the Gleaner of April 16, 1918, two trustees, James Thomas and William Mamby had filed for ejectment from the church property, on which some people lived as renters, of the other group of trustees made up of Alexander Clunie, S. H. Staples and Daniel A. Reid.
 
In 1919, the trustees were again before the courts.  James Thomas, William Mamby, James Power, Alexander Weise, Richard Williams and Christopher Reefe, who claimed to be the trustees of Killick’s Trust, filed suit against John Cole, Joseph Brown, Joseph Anthony, Emanuel Walters, Rev. G. E. Stewart and R. V. Crutchley over the ownership of a portion of the 3-acre land, which by then was described as land on which existed “a small chapel and several other buildings rented out to tenants.” According to a Gleaner report published on October 11,1919, a Mr. Dayes [who appeared in court on behalf of the plaintiffs] explained that the conflict "arose out of a long-standing dispute between the trustees of Killicks. They had divided themselves up in sections and worked one against the other. The defendants broke the lock of the church and entered and held service: after the Rev. Stewart had been dismissed and the door locked against him. It was a great pity that the matter could not be settled among them, and had to be brought to Court."
 
The judge, His Honour Mr. Justice H. I. C. Brown, K. C., ruled on behalf of the defendants.
 
In July 1920, articles appeared in The Gleaner newspaper reporting extensively on other court cases involving two groups of the church’s trustees – one led by James Thomas and William Mamby and the other by John Cole and Joseph Brown. The caption of an article published in The Gleaner of May 31, 1920 reads “Kellets Church and its Trouble – Long Drawn-Out Litigation again Comes Before The Kingston Court.”
 
Today, no Baptist Church exists on the property that Liele worked so hard to secure. A small church building on the site has a sign before it that reads, “Church of Christ, Elletson Road.”
 
Unfortunately, the Windward Road Chapel is no more. Despite this, we should not forget Liele and his associates who laboured there to give birth to Baptist witness in Jamaica. Nor should we forget William Killick who strove valiantly to faithfully fulfil the demands of the ministry offered at the site at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Elletson Road. We owe him a debt of gratitude.