Rev. Samuel H. Davis
Rev. Samuel H. Davis (1810-1907)
By William J. Richardson, g-g-grandson
Samuel Henry Davis was born 13 August 1810 in Temple (Mills) Maine.
It has been reported that Davis received advanced training in Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, in the ministry and teaching. After leaving Oberlin, he spent some time in Windsor, Ontario, before moving to Buffalo, New York in 1842, where he became the third African-American hired to teach in the African school in the city of Buffalo, New York’s public school system.
In 1843, he was elected to serve as president, pro-tempore, of the National Convention of Colored Citizens held in Buffalo. Despite the attendance of renowned speakers, Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet, Davis was the keynote speaker, a testament to his oratory skills.
A year later, he established his own English-Colored private school.
In 1844, Davis, a mason by trade, started building Michigan Street Baptist Church in the city. He also served as station master of the U.G.R.R. there. It was at this church where he was ordained.
After finishing his teaching contract in 1846, he left Buffalo for Detroit and was Second Baptist Church's third pastor from 1847 to 1851. Here, he continued as station master of the U.G.R.R. and used his teaching ability to help his own people. He took out time to marry, Catherine McGuin, in 1849 in Burford, Ontario. He took his bride to Detroit. Michigan to live. They had two sons, John Walker and Samuel James Davis there.
The British American Institute (known informally as The Dawn School and the BAI) had been formed in 1842 by Josiah Henson, an escaped slave from Kentucky, Hiram Wilson, a white American Congregationalist minister/missionary and James C. Fuller, a British-born American Quaker philanthropist. Such an educational institution, about ½ mile south of Dresden, set up on the manual-labour system, would give the escaped slaves a temporary home and an elementary and trade education, which would serve the end proposed. However, the Institute at first was very successful, but had since fallen on “hard times” financially. Wilson had left and Fuller had died. The trustees wanted to resuscitate/revive the BAI.
What to do? The BAI trustees met very early in 1850. They had heard good reports of the (American Baptist) Free Mission Society (ABFMS), headquartered in Boston. [This ABFMS was an organization of anti-slavery and abolitionists, who as part of their missions, sent money and aid to refugee slaves wherever they may have gone. They had already established a successful manual school in Upper New York State.]
Elder William P. Newman, of Cincinnati, Ohio, already in Canada (Chatham/Dawn area) doing mission work for the ABFMS, had an oversight of the Society’s operations in Canada. He also wanted to see the BAI restored to its glory days. He conceived a plan to rescue it. He finally succeeding in arranging a meeting with the BAI Trustees and it was decided that the entire future management of the BAI was to be under the control of the trustee board of the ABFMS. [The premises consisted of a farm of some 300 acres of good land; a steam saw mill, which Josiah Henson had recently rented out for four years to pay off claims against the Institution, a log chapel, and some small log buildings in a dilapidated state.] The chapel was fitted up and a school commenced under the instruction of Elder Samuel H. Davis, their missionary. A church congregation was also commenced (in the chapel) under the direction of Elder Newman, also their missionary.
So it can be said that these ABFMS trustees put Elder Newman, of Cincinnati, Ohio and Elder Davis, of Detroit, Michigan (collectively known as the Baptists) in charge to oversee all the operations (manage) the British American Institute, 1850. It is stated that they did assist each other in their duties. It is not stated who, in particular, was in charge of the farm and other operations, but the ABFMS trustees, as stated, put the Baptists, as their agents, in complete management control of the BAI. [Henson continued as sub-manager of the saw mill.]
Nominally the leader at Dawn was Rev. Samuel H. Davis, most likely because he was in charge of the school, which became the organizational centre of activities of the school itself and the Dawn settlement at large.
In September 1851, Davis, as pastor, recommended that the Second Baptist Church, Detroit withdraw from the Amherstburg Baptist Association (now the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association), and become active in the Canadian Anti-Slavery Baptist Association. He thought it was a better fit for his church’s doctrine. In November, of that same year, he resigned from Second Baptist Church to continue his teaching at the BAI. He continued to live in Detroit and commuted to Dawn. The Baptists were at Dawn 1850-1853.
Davis and his family, at this time, lived in the Detroit, Michigan on Croghan [now Monroe] Street in 1850 and later on Russell Street in 1855-56. Because of the ever present dangers that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law created, Davis decided to move, he and his family, to the safety of Canada. He may have moved his family to Canada by 1857 as his third child, Mary Jane Davis, was born in Burford, Ontario.
By 1857, Davis, along with others, hewed logs to help build the First Regular (aka Queen Street) Baptist Church, Dresden. He donated 100 cords of wood as payment for the solving sawing of lumber.
In 1858, his wife, Catherine bought 50 acres of land just south of Dresden. On this land, he built a log cabin for his family where his fourth child, Sarah Ann Davis, was born in 1861. Two more children followed: Emma Catherine, born 1865 and Martha McGuin Davis, born 1870. In 1871 he bought the adjoining, north 50 acres, creating a 100 acre farm.
Davis became the pastor of the First Regular Baptist Church, Dresden in 1858, serving 15 straight years before having a break. Over the period 1858-1881, he pastored Dresden for 18 years and Chatham First Baptist for one year. He later served Sandwich Baptist Church for at least five years. He also served as an itinerant minister and traveling missionary for the association. He served in the Amherstburg (Regular Missionary) Baptist Association for 60 years as its moderator, clerk and in other administrative roles.
Davis died in 1907 at 97 years of age. All of his children, except daughter Emma Catherine (died young), were alive at the time of his death. He is buried, with his wife Catherine and Emma Catherine, in the British American Institute Cemetery, across the road from the Henson Family Cemetery, part of the Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site, just south of Dresden, Ontario. ©
(1) Final version of the Profile of Rev. Samuel H. Davis (copyrighted).
(2) Image of Rev. Samuel H. Davis, n.d. (copyrighted),
Image courtesy of William J. Richardson, Toronto, Ontario and Martha Susan Prescod, Hunt Valley, Maryland.
