Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on a small knoll on Hindustan Road outside New Grant in southern Trinidad. It is an unassuming church, and yet it can be considered the epicenter of the Baptist religion in Trinidad and Tobago. This church was established in 1816 and the significance of that date has to do with the settlement of the “Merikens” in Trinidad in that year.
In 1816, demobilized Africans who had served in the British Army during the British-American War of 1812 settled in Trinidad in what became known as Company Villages. According to AB Huggins in his book “The Saga of Companies” the term “Merikens” arose because these individuals could not correctly pronounce the letter A in American. John McNish Weiss in his article “The Corps of Colonial Marines” says that these “Merikin” soldiers were slaves in the US who were promised their freedom if they fought for the British. Recruited by the British first in Maryland and Virginia and later in Georgia, they were a fighting unit highly praised for their courage and discipline.
When the companies of the British Army left for England in April 1815, the six black companies became the 3rd Colonial Marine Battalion, garrisoned in Bermuda on the island of Ireland. They did garrison duties and worked as craftsmen and laborers on the construction of the new Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. When transfer to the West India Regiments was proposed, the men rejected the idea. Their persistent intransigence eventually led the British government to offer to locate them in Trinidad as independent farmers. Accepting the offer, they left Bermuda on July 15, 1816. The first group of 71 settled at Dunmore Hill and Mount Elvin, while the second group of 72 settled at Indian Walk.
These were religious people who followed the Baptist religion practiced in the southern United States. Although there were no clergy among them, there were 5 men who were described as Anabaptist preachers holding Sunday ceremonies. One of these men was known as Brother Will Hamilton. In 1808 the London Missionary Society (Baptist) sent workers to Guyana and Tobago and in 1809 one of them, Thomas Adam, moved to Trinidad. He and later Rev. George Cowen, while working on the establishment of St. John’s Baptist Church in Port of Spain, Trinidad, also assisted these African-American ex-slaves who practiced a version of the Baptist faith. Over time, the similarities of the religion led to the adoption of the missionaries’ version of the Baptist faith which came to be called in Trinidad, London Baptist.
However, over time, according to Ashram Stapleton in his book “The Birth and Growth of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and Tobago”, a schism developed as some people in the church wanted certain African practices and the Missionary Society to be included. of London disapproved of such practices. . Eventually these people left the church and were first called the “Navy Baptists” and finally the Spiritual or Crying Baptists. Other differences within London Baptists then led to further variations of the Baptist religion with the development of Independent Baptists and Fundamental Baptists.
So today Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on its mound, overlooking the fields these African-American ex-slaves painted and created, continuing their adherence to the London version of Baptist but having spawned the entire Baptist religion in Trinidad.
