Update this timeline entry

Bray's Associates met on parochial libraries, negro conversion, and GA

Source: The Southern Frontier #86

Project ID

Chapter

Timeline title

Start date

End date

Filename received

Filename assigned

Content

Meanwhile, the enlargement of the [Bray] Associates in scope and personnel had been effected. In April, 1730, Percival took legal counsel as to the method, and was informed that it could not be done by the original trustees, but only by the Master of the Rolls, by bill and answer. By July, apparently, the reorganization was completed. On July 1 Percival recorded that he 'Went to town to a meeting of the new Society for fulfilling Mr. Dalone's will in the conversion of negroes, and disposing' of five thousand pounds ... in settling some hundred of families in Carolina, who came necessitous out of gaols by virtue of our late debtors Act.' In 1737 an advertisement of 'The Associates of the late Dr. Bray' referred to their activities 'since July; 1730.'45

[Note 45 Percival, Diary; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes. The minutes of the society at this period have not been discovered. But in the Sloane MSS is a copy, transmitted to Sir Hans Sloane, 'of a Minute of the General Meeting of the Gentlemen associated for executing Mr. D' Allone's Will; by Instructing the Negroes of the British Plantations in the Christian Religion: And also for settling parochial Libraries in Great Britain & Ireland; and for establishing a Charitable Colony in America, on the 12th of August 1731.' Anderson had acquainted the meeting that Sloane was desirous of obtaining materials relating to missionary enterprises among the heathen, and was ordered to acquaint him that 'they will speedily prepare & present him with a Manuscript Copy of a Work, intended to be published, Giving an Account of the Life of the late Dr. Thomas Bray ... Together with Some Account of the Proceedings and Designs of the Gentlemen associated as above named.' See above, note 4, and references.]