Thomas Burchell
Thomas Burchell (1799–1846) was a leading Baptist missionary and slavery abolitionist in Montego Bay, Jamaica in the early nineteenth century.
Burchell is credited with the concept of Free Villages and encouraging their development by Baptist colleagues such as William Knibb, as well as by other denominations.
Anticipating abolition of slavery, he helped raise funds in Great Britain to acquire land for freedmen after they were emancipated, and to develop Free Villages.
Active in organizing a strike of workers that resulted in the Baptist War (1831-1832), Sharpe was executed by the government in May 1832.
[2] He appointed as deacon Samuel Sharpe, a man who was born into slavery in Jamaica but had gained an education.
The Jamaican government and planters conducted massive reprisals against suspected slaves and allies after using troops to suppress the rebellion in December and January 1832.
Burchell's deacon Samuel Sharpe, who had organized a general strike of slaves to protest working conditions, was captured in the roundup of hundreds of suspects.
In the 20th century, The Manse has been adapted for use and renamed as the Burchell Memorial Church; it is preserved and managed by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, founded in 1958.
Starting in the 1830s, in anticipation of the emancipation under discussion in Parliament, the Jamaican Baptist congregations, deacons, and ministers proposed the Caribbean concept of "free villages": to grant freedpeople plots of land for their own to cultivate as the basis of independent villages, to be organized around a Baptist church.
Burchell developed this idea especially with fellow English Baptist missionaries William Knibb and James Phillippo.
Many plantation owners and others in the landowning class had made it clear they would never sell any land to freed slaves, but provide only "tied accommodation" at the rents they chose.
Due to Burchell's initiative, Sandy Bay, Jamaica, was founded as a Baptist Free Village for freedmen.
The missionaries were not able to provide for the mass of freedmen, but their several Free Villages allowed more families to build independent lives in the post-emancipation years.
He began to mix his own preparations, based on studies of chemistry in college, in order to be able to care for his people, as he could not afford to import all supplies.
The Foundation's primary mission as a Caribbean nonprofit is to help uplift and sustain the youth of Jamaica, empowering them to build better lives for themselves through spiritual and educational support.
It partners with local Jamaican Baptist and Roman Catholic Churches (including the Burchell Memorial Baptist Church, established by Thomas Burchell in 1824) to identify, select and monitor deserving students in the civic parishes of Westmoreland, St. James, Trelawny, Hanover and St.Ann.
