Singleton, Benjamin (15 August 1809–1892), black nationalist and land promoter, known as “Pap,” was born into slavery in Nashville, Tennessee. Little is known about the first six decades of his life. In his old age Singleton reminisced that his master had sold him to buyers as far away as Alabama and Mississippi several times, but that each time he had escaped and returned to Nashville. Tiring of this treatment, he ran away to Windsor, Ontario, and shortly thereafter moved to Detroit. There he quietly opened a boardinghouse for escaped slaves and supported himself by scavenging. In 1865 he came home to Edgefield, Tennessee, across the Cumberland River from Nashville, and supported himself as a cabinetmaker and carpenter....
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Singleton, Benjamin (1809-1892), black nationalist and land promoter
Stephen W. Angell
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Spencer, Peter (1782-1843), founder of the Union Church of Africans
Lewis V. Baldwin
Spencer, Peter ( February 1782– July 1843), founder of the Union Church of Africans, was born a slave in Kent County, Maryland. Much of his early life is shrouded in obscurity. There is no record of his parents’ names. Freed upon the death of his master, he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, sometime in the 1790s and received a basic education in a free African school supported by Quakers....
