Son of a Former Slave, Born into Enslavement: Samuel Barber (1783–1828) and Edward Fraser (1798–1872), Two Mixed-Race Methodist Evangelists

Abstract

This article examines the lives of two mixed-race evangelists, Samuel Barber (1783–1828) and Edward Fraser (1798–1872). Born in London, Barber, whose father was a manumitted slave, became a Primitive Methodist lay preacher in Staffordshire. Fraser, born in Barbados, was illegitimate; his mother was enslaved. Freed at the age of twenty-nine, he became a prominent Wesleyan Methodist missionary and minister in Antigua, Bermuda, Dominica, Jamaica, and St Kitts. The article pays particular attention to these men’s racial heritage.