Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on a minor knoll off Hindustan Street on the outskirts of New Grant in southern Trinidad. It is an unpretentious church and however it can be regarded the epicenter of the Baptist religion in Trinidad and Tobago. This church was set up 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 Army during the War of 1812 in between the British and the Us citizens have been settled in Trinidad in what arrived to be identified as the Company Villages. According to A.B. Huggins in his guide “the Saga of the Organizations” the phrase “Merikens” arose simply because these folks could not correctly pronounce the letter A in American. John McNish Weiss in his paper “The Corps of Colonial Marines” claims that these “Merikin” troopers had been slaves in the United states of america who were promised their independence if they fought for the British. Recruited by the British 1st in Maryland and Virginia and later in Georgia, they have been a combating unit significantly praised for valor and discipline.
When the British Army businesses still left for house in England in April 1815, the 6 Black businesses turned the third Battalion Colonial Marines, garrisoned in Bermuda on Ireland Island. They did garrison responsibility and labored as artisans and laborers in the developing of the new Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. When transfer to the West India Regiments was proposed the gentlemen rejected the idea. Their persistent intransigence ultimately led the British federal government to provide to spot them in Trinidad as unbiased farmers. On accepting the offer you they left Bermuda on fifteen July 1816.The 1st team of seventy one settled in Dunmore Hill and Mount Elvin even though the next group of seventy two settled in Indian Stroll.
These were religious people who adopted the Baptist religion practiced in the southern United States. Though there had been no clergymen amongst them there ended up five guys who have been explained as Anabaptist preachers who held Sunday ceremonies. churches in Raleigh of these gentlemen was recognized as Brother Will Hamilton. In 1808 the London Missionary Modern society (Baptist) sent workers to Guyana and Tobago and in 1809 a single of them, Thomas Adam, relocated to Trinidad. He and later Reverend George Cowen although operating on the institution of St John’s Baptist Church in Port of Spain Trinidad also gave help to these African-American ex-slaves who ended up practising a model of the Baptist faith. In time, the similarities of the religion led to the adoption of the missionaries’ model of the Baptist faith that arrived to be named in Trinidad, London Baptist.
Above time however, in accordance to Ashram Stapleton in his guide “The Birth and Progress of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and Tobago”, there produced a schism as some persons in the church needed specific African procedures included and the London Missionary Culture frowned on individuals procedures. At some point these individuals remaining the church and have been 1st called the “Disobedient Baptists” and last but not least the Spiritual or Shouter Baptist. Other variations in the London Baptists then led to additional variations of the Baptist religion with the advancement of the Impartial Baptists and the Fundamental Baptists.