Lower Black Creek Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1783, was the second church organized in what is now Wilson County. (It closed its doors in 2010.) The church’s nineteenth and early twentieth-century records includes names of enslaved and freed African-American members, who worshipped with the congregation as second-class Christians even after Emancipation.

This page is entitled “at a Conference held at Black Creek church the 3rd Sunday before the second Sunday in April 1853 Apointed Wm Lewis Clerk of the church.” Seven (13?) “servants,” i.e., enslaved people, appear in the list.

• Seal, a servant of “B. Br.”, died 1853
• Jim, a servant
• Mariar, a servant
• Mike, a servant
• Fany, a servant of James Newsom
• Hester, a servant of Johnathan Barnes
• Zilpha, a servant of H. [illegible] D. Reson, “Turned out for fornication”
• James, a servant [same as above?]
• Fanney, a servant, “excommunicated charged with fornication” [same as above?]
• Hester, a servant [same as above?]
• Seal, a servant [same as above?]
• Mariah, a servant [same as above?]
• Mike, a servant [same as above?]