Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on a tiny knoll off Hindustan Highway on the outskirts of New Grant in southern Trinidad. It is an unpretentious church and however it can be regarded as the epicenter of the Baptist religion in Trinidad and Tobago. This church was proven in 1816 and the significance of that date has to do with the settlement of the “Merikens” in Trinidad in that calendar year.
In 1816 demobilized Africans who had served in the British Military throughout the War of 1812 between the British and the Americans have been settled in Trinidad in what came to be recognized as the Business Villages. In accordance to A.B. Huggins in his guide “the Saga of the Businesses” the phrase “Merikens” arose simply because these men and women could not properly pronounce the letter A in American. John McNish Weiss in his paper “The Corps of Colonial Marines” says that these “Merikin” troopers had been slaves in the United states of america who have been promised their freedom if they fought for the British. Recruited by the British 1st in Maryland and Virginia and later on in Ga, they were a preventing device much praised for valor and willpower.
When the British Military firms left for residence in England in April 1815, the six Black businesses became the third Battalion Colonial Marines, garrisoned in Bermuda on Ireland Island. They did garrison duty and labored as artisans and laborers in the creating of the new Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. When transfer to the West India Regiments was proposed the gentlemen rejected the thought. Their persistent intransigence finally led the British government to offer to spot them in Trinidad as impartial farmers. On accepting the offer they left Bermuda on 15 July 1816.The initial team of seventy one settled in Dunmore Hill and Mount Elvin whilst the next group of 72 settled in Indian Walk.
These had been religious men and women who followed the Baptist faith practiced in the southern United States. Despite the fact that there have been no clergymen among them there have been five gentlemen who were described as Anabaptist preachers who held Sunday ceremonies. A single of these guys was known as Brother Will Hamilton. In 1808 the London Missionary Society (Baptist) despatched employees to Guyana and Tobago and in 1809 one particular of them, Thomas Adam, relocated to Trinidad. He and later on Reverend George Cowen even though operating on the establishment of St John’s Baptist Church in Port of Spain Trinidad also gave assistance to these African-American ex-slaves who had been training a edition of the Baptist religion. In time, the similarities of the religion led to the adoption of the missionaries’ model of the Baptist religion that arrived to be known as in Trinidad, London Baptist.
Above time nonetheless, according to Ashram Stapleton in his book “The Beginning and Growth of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and Tobago”, there produced a schism as some individuals in the church needed specified African practices provided and the London Missionary Culture frowned on these methods. Ultimately these persons left the church and had been very first called the “Disobedient Baptists” and finally the Religious or Shouter Baptist. baptist church in Raleigh of the London Baptists then led to additional variations of the Baptist faith with the development of the Impartial Baptists and the Elementary Baptists.