John Clark of Brown’s Town
John
Clark of Brown’s Town and John Clarke of Jericho were cousins. John Clark of
Brown’s Town was born in Gateshead, England, on December 19, 1809. He became a
member of Devonshire Square Church, London. This was the church that the
celebrated Baptist leader, William Kiffin (1616-1701), served as pastor between
1639 and 1701. The church was located near what is now the Liverpool Street
train station in London. Commissioned by BMS as a missionary to Jamaica, he landed
in St Ann’s Bay on August 27, 1835. His first assignment was as assistant to
James Coultart in St Ann.
Coultart’s churches ended up under Clark’s leadership. Soon, however, the Clarks moved from St Ann’s Bay to Brown’s Town and Rev Thomas Abbott was assigned responsibility for the St. Ann’s Bay and Ocho Rios churches. Clark’s work was then to serve the churches in Brown’s Town and the surrounding districts.
Clark learned from his church members
the cruelty of enslavement and, from his residence, he could sometimes hear the
cries of some who were undergoing torture under apprenticeship. This influenced
Clark to oppose the Apprenticeship System and to communicate with the Anti-Slavery
Society in England. This led to two British abolitionists and philanthropists,
Joseph Sturge of Birmingham and Thomas Harvey of Leeds, visiting several West
Indian islands in 1837 to investigate and to produce a report on the operation
of the
Apprenticeship System. Among the places they visited, while in
Jamaica, were Brown’s Town and its environs, such as Retreat Pen, Cardiff Hall,
and Orange Valley. They arranged a meeting with apprentices from Penshurst in
the Brown’s Town mission house. This resulted in James Williams, one of the
apprentices there, securing his freedom and returning to England with Sturge to
publicise the case against apprenticeship. While in England the publication in
1837 of A Narrative of Events Since the First of August, 1834, By James
Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica helped strengthen the case
against apprenticeship.
Not surprisingly, the Baptist church in Brown’s Town was one of the churches that were overcrowded in the evening of July 31, 1838, when worshippers assembled to mark the end of the apprenticeship system in Jamaica. In his sermon, Clark praised the unchanging God of Israel who hates oppression and liberates the oppressed.
Clark loved the Lord and was deeply committed to serving the churches under his watch. A man of the people, he was deeply committed to liberation from enslavement and was an ardent contributor to community development. Soon, he saw the need to assist the newly emancipated to find land on which to build houses and set up homes. So-called “free villages” were established at Mt Abyla and such other communities as those now called Sturge Town, Clarksonville, Wilberforce and Buxton. In addition, land was purchased at Bethany, Salem, Pleasant Valley, Philadelphia and Harmony. The parcels of land were subdivided and units were sold to the newly emancipated on the basis of a manageable payment plan. The purchasers erected small houses for their families. Each community had a space set apart for a prayer house where the people could meet two or three evenings per week and on Sundays, especially in the evenings. These so-called class houses were placed under the leadership of deacons. Schools were established in Brown’s Town and Bethany.
Meanwhile, a gifted evangelist, Clark travelled from place to place on horseback, preaching the Gospel. Many were led to faith in Christ and new churches were established in Bethany, in 1836; Mt. Zion, James Hill, Clarendon, in 1838; Clarksonville in 1839; Sturge Town, in 1840; and Salem, in 1843.
Taxed to the limit by the demands of the churches and the schools, Clark appealed to BMS to send him an assistant. In 1840, Rev Henry John Dutton arrived. One year later, three more persons arrived and, they undertook educational work. Eventually, Dutton was put in charge of the Bethany, Clarksonville and Mount Zion churches. After a year of work, Dutton decided to leave St Ann to work in the Jericho circuit. On the eve of his departure, he fell ill with a dreadful fever and died in November, 1846, before he could make it to Jericho. Clark was forced to resume leadership of the Bethany and Clarksonville churches.
A year later, Clark received much needed relief when Calabar College began to produce graduates. In 1847, after three years in College, Francis Johnson from Brown’s Town took leadership of the churches at Clarksonville and James Hill. In 1850, Calabar released W. L. McLaggan, whose home church was Jericho Baptist, and he assumed responsibility for Sturge Town. Meanwhile, Clark and his wife returned to England for a well-deserved one-year furlough, leaving his two churches to be served by recent Calabar graduate, William Webb, who was from Bethany and who was pastor in the Stewart Town circuit. In 1865, thanks again to Calabar, more help was on the way for Clark. Salem Church came under the leadership of J. G. Bennett. As a result of these changes, in 1880, Clark was left with responsibility for only Brown’s Town and Bethany.
If Clark had retired at this time, the end of his story in Brown’s Town would have been entirely different from what we will relate briefly. Returning from England, Clark knew that his heart was not functioning as well as it used to. He had been warned by his doctors in England that his cardiac issues required that he slow down. With the passage of time, Clark found it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the churches, but mutual love between him and his churches prevented his retirement.
As I turned out, in 1874, one James Johnston, turned up at Clark’s door introducing himself as a graduate of the Harley House in London, which was a Dr Gratton Guiness-run institution that prepared people for the mission field. Johnston explained that he was on his way to serve as assistant to Rev W. F. Hathaway, who was connected with the General Baptist Missionary Society and was serving in Clarendon, but was unable to complete his journey immediately, and so was requesting hospitality for a two-week period. The Clarks kindly granted the request. Both the Clarks and the people who met Johnston were deeply impressed with him and, when the two weeks elapsed, Johnston was on his way to Clarendon. He was not to remain there for long. Ater being there for a few weeks, Johnston wrote to Clark claiming he had found the damp weather in Clarendon unsuitable and asking to be allowed to return to serve with Clark in Brown’s Town. Clark consented and he and Johnston agreed terms of engagement, but this was a huge mistake.
After serving for six months in Brown’s Town, Johnston asked to be allowed to make Bethany his home. Again, Clark consented and July, 1875, marked the start of Johnston’s ministry in Bethany.
Johnston
had an attractive personality and he was a good speaker and a gifted singer. He
developed excellent rapport with the people he served. Soon, he started
receiving invitations to preach in several churches of the JBU. Unfortunately,
wherever he went, Johnston not only impressed the people with his gifts, but
also spread false news about his benefactor – claiming, for example, that he
was being victimized on account of the stipend Clarke arranged for him.
Johnston’s fake news reached the print media in England – resulting in Clark’s
discovery of the evil scheme Johnston had been pursuing. A letter was sent to a
benefactor in Bristol in which Johnston claimed he had been dismissed from the
Baptist Church “for preaching the second coming of Christ.” In addition, people
started a rumour that Clark had fashioned deeds to the church properties in his
own name. The original source of this rumour was not confirmed.
Anxious to clear up the misinformation, Clark asked highly respected ministers in JBU to visit St Ann and investigate Johnston’s claims. On March 23, 1876, when Revds. W. T. Hathaway of Clarendon, Ellis Fray, Sr. of Duncans; Thomas Griffiths of St Ann’s Bay; and young William Webb of Stewart Town, arrived in Bethany for a meeting with Clark and Johnston. They were very surprised to find a large crowd from the Bethany community massed in the church yard. For two hours, the visitors met in the church vestry with the two ministers and they found no truth whatsoever in Johnston’s charges. Clark even presented copies of the titles to the church properties to prove his innocence. The committee from JBU drafted a resolution recommending that Johnston retire from the churches and Clark find another assistant.
Realizing he had not managed to deceive the committee, Johnston went out to the crowds and advised them that if they would stand with him, he would stand with them. As the ministers entered their cars and were driving away, the mob threw stones at them, injuring Webb. Johnston then convened an open air meeting in Bethany and, afterwards, in proximity to some of other churches that Clark starteed. In these meetings, he increased his false charges against Clark and managed to deceive the people completely. He began at once to form new churches drawn mostly from Clark’s congregations – at St D’Acre, near Bethany; in Brown’s Town and in Sturge Town.
After working so hard and for so long and after being so kind to so many people with whom he had served in St Ann, Clark was deeply disappointed by the great schism that Johnston fashioned. Clark invited Edward Hewett and J E Henderson of Montego Bay, two of the longest-serving missionaries in Jamaica, to travel to Brown’s Town to conduct another investigation of the situation he was facing and to offer him counsel. The two ministers invited George E. Henderson, fresh out of training in New York State, to accompany them to Brown’s Town to record the minutes of their meeting, and he consented.
The
ministers also contacted Mr Johnston to invite his participation in the meeting.
They spent a whole morning investigating the situation at a meeting in the Brown’s
Town church. Once again, Clark was vindicated.
Meanwhile, what remained of the churches Clark had worked tirelessly to build was lamentable. The number of members who were in the churches before and after the crisis tells the story: Brown’s Town fell from 800 to 523; Bethany from 700 to 42; Sturge Town from 150 to 23.
Clark decided to secure the services of another assistant instead of abandoning the churches he so loved. He wrote to Rev George E Henderson as follows, “Dear young brother – My churches are shattered. My heath is broken; and I am totally unfit for work. Can you come and assist me at least for a time?”
Counselled by Hewett and J. E. Henderson, the young minister went to Brown’s Town to assist Clark. He completed four years with Clark, who became his mentor. He was saddened when, on July 2, 1880, Clark died. He died in his wife’s prayerful company with a broken heart, but not without his faith in God firmly intact. This was not, however, before he began to see small signs unity returning to the churches he had served so lovingly.
Clark’s wife survived him by eleven years, dying on July 10, 1891. She got the opportunity to see the revival of the Brown’s Town church which she served for 55 years.
It is good that we have a record of Clark’s work, prepared by his successor and son-in-law George E. Henderson in the book, Goodness and Mercy: A Tale of a Hundred Years, (Kingston; The Gleaner Co., 1931). I have drawn extensively from this and from other accounts.
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