Queens' members and the Slave Trade

The son of an Antiguan slave owner, Charles Crawford entered Queens’ College as a wealthy Fellow-Commoner in 1768. Notoriously bellicose and unstable, Crawford was expelled from Queens’ in 1773. When ordered to leave the College, Crawford began to harass its members, and, on one occasion, threatened to kill the porters with a pistol hidden in his coat. After two years, he finally gave up his campaign to be reinstated as a student and vowed to cut all ties with Queens’. He travelled to Philadelphia and became a writer and landowner, publishing poems and essays in the early years after the American Revolution. Despite his background, Crawford was a vehement abolitionist and keen supporter of colonial Christian missionary work. This particular pamphlet, <i>Essay on the Propagation of the Gospel</i>, supports the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity, believing them to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a theory often echoed in the literature of the <a href="https://www.queensoldlibrary.org/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Queens-and-the-SPG/"><u>Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts</u></a>.
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<b>Author:</b> Charles Crawford<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Essay on the Propagation of the Gospel</i>, 1st ed. (Philadelphia, 1799)<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> Y.I.20

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The son of an Antiguan slave owner, Charles Crawford entered Queens’ College as a wealthy Fellow-Commoner in 1768. Notoriously bellicose and unstable, Crawford was expelled from Queens’ in 1773. When ordered to leave the College, Crawford began to harass its members, and, on one occasion, threatened to kill the porters with a pistol hidden in his coat. After two years, he finally gave up his campaign to be reinstated as a student and vowed to cut all ties with Queens’. He travelled to Philadelphia and became a writer and landowner, publishing poems and essays in the early years after the American Revolution. Despite his background, Crawford was a vehement abolitionist and keen supporter of colonial Christian missionary work. This particular pamphlet, Essay on the Propagation of the Gospel, supports the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity, believing them to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a theory often echoed in the literature of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

Author: Charles Crawford
Title: Essay on the Propagation of the Gospel, 1st ed. (Philadelphia, 1799)
Shelfmark: Y.I.20

Enslavement Y.1.20 exhibition