Mount Elvin Baptist Church sits quietly on a tiny knoll off Hindustan Road on the outskirts of New Grant in southern Trinidad. It is an unpretentious church and but it can be regarded the epicenter of the Baptist faith in Trinidad and Tobago. This church was established in 1816 and the importance of that day has to do with the settlement of the “Merikens” in Trinidad in that yr.

In 1816 demobilized Africans who experienced served in the British Military for the duration of the War of 1812 in between the British and the Individuals have been settled in Trinidad in what arrived to be identified as the Organization Villages. In accordance to A.B. Huggins in his book “the Saga of the Organizations” the phrase “Merikens” arose since these individuals could not effectively pronounce the letter A in American. John McNish Weiss in his paper “The Corps of Colonial Marines” claims that these “Merikin” soldiers had been slaves in the United states of america who had been promised their freedom if they fought for the British. Recruited by the British initial in Maryland and Virginia and later in Georgia, they were a fighting device considerably praised for valor and self-discipline.

When the British Army businesses remaining for property in England in April 1815, the six Black organizations turned the third Battalion Colonial Marines, garrisoned in Bermuda on Ireland Island. They did garrison responsibility and worked as artisans and laborers in the developing of the new Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. When baptist church in Raleigh to the West India Regiments was proposed the guys turned down the concept. Their persistent intransigence last but not least led the British government to supply to spot them in Trinidad as impartial farmers. On accepting the provide they left Bermuda on fifteen July 1816.The first group of 71 settled in Dunmore Hill and Mount Elvin although the second team of 72 settled in Indian Stroll.

These were religious men and women who followed the Baptist faith practiced in the southern United States. Though there had been no clergymen amid them there were five males who were explained as Anabaptist preachers who held Sunday ceremonies. A single of these men was acknowledged as Brother Will Hamilton. In 1808 the London Missionary Culture (Baptist) sent staff to Guyana and Tobago and in 1809 a single of them, Thomas Adam, relocated to Trinidad. He and later on Reverend George Cowen while functioning on the institution of St John’s Baptist Church in Port of Spain Trinidad also gave support to these African-American ex-slaves who have been training a model of the Baptist religion. In time, the similarities of the faith led to the adoption of the missionaries’ variation of the Baptist faith that came to be called in Trinidad, London Baptist.

More than time nonetheless, in accordance to Ashram Stapleton in his e-book “The Start and Growth of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and Tobago”, there developed a schism as some folks in the church needed certain African procedures integrated and the London Missionary Modern society frowned on those practices. Eventually these people still left the church and had been very first referred to as the “Disobedient Baptists” and ultimately the Spiritual or Shouter Baptist. Other variances inside of the London Baptists then led to further variations of the Baptist faith with the improvement of the Impartial Baptists and the Elementary Baptists.