AFRICAN CHURCH. The origin of this great community as a separate interest has already been suggested in the history of the First church. The colored members had, for a long time, been about quadruple to that of the whites. They, by mutual agreement, continued to occupy the old capacious building, where their assemblages are very large.

Rev. Robert Ryland, who is the head of the Baptist Seminary in this city, which is designed ultimately for a college, has the pastoral care of this numerous congregation. The communicants alone are upwards of two thousand.

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[From David Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, 1848; rpt. 1977, p. 662.]

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