African Association of New Brunswick (1817-1824)

Update 2023:

The complete minute book has now been scanned and transcribed and is made available in the New Jersey Slavery Records database. The NJSR database also includes all related permission slips, biographical profiles for the people named in these documents, and additional archival sources about their lives. See the African Association of New Brunswick record in the NJSR database for links to all related documents and people.

Collection Description:

This collection features the records of the African Association of New Brunswick, including the organization's Minute Book for 1817–1824 and several permission slips from local slaveholders allowing enslaved men and women to join the organization alongside the free people of color who made up the majority of the organization's membership. Among these local slaveholders were major Rutgers trustees and benefactors John Neilson (permission for Phillis), James Neilson (permission for Mark Harris), Andrew Kirkpatrick (permission for Samuel Lane), and the Reverend Abraham Beach (permission for Cato). The Somerset County farmer Abraham Staats (whose house is now a historic site open to visitors) also gave permission to a black man named Harry to join the organization.

Established on January 1, 1817, the African Association was the earliest black institution in New Brunswick. The organization's original stated purpose was to support the African School in Parsippany, NJ. The Parsippany school was founded in 1816 under the auspices of the Presbyterian Synod of New York and New Jersey to educate "young men of Colour to be Teachers and Preachers to People of Colour within these states and beyond." The African Association of New Brunswick quickly became a space of black identity formation and racial uplift as members engaged in discussions of black education, Christianity, abolitionism, and colonization. Some meetings were held in the Sessions Room at the First Presbyterian Church while the majority took place in the homes of free black New Brunswickers. Committee meetings were held monthly, but the New Year's anniversary meeting drew the largest crowds for any given year. In 1823, the association established a local African School for the education of children of color in New Brunswick, holding classes in the home of Caesar Rappleyea, a longtime leader with the organization.

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