[1] In 1847, William Saunders Crowdy was born into slavery at the Chilsy Hills Farm, a plantation in Charlotte Hall, Maryland.

[2] His father was Basil Crowdy, a deeply religious man who oversaw the drying of clay for the plantation's brick kiln.

As he grew older he was assigned by the slave overseer to tend the plantation's melon patch, and then to work as a stable boy and tobacco drier.

Despite it being illegal for slaves to read, Crowdy was a religious and caring man from a young age and learned about the Hebrew prophets, especially Elijah.

Crowdy served as a laborer and supply storeman, and participated in the capture of a confederate flour wagon being smuggled into Petersburg, Virginia during the siege of Richmond.

In 1905 he sent missionaries to South Africa and by 1906 he declared Chief Joseph W. Crowdy, Bishop William H. Plummer, and Elder Calvin S. Skinner as future leaders of his congregation.

[citation needed] Shais Rishon, a Black Orthodox Jewish writer and activist, has claimed that Crowdy was "A southern baptist who never belonged nor converted to any branch of Judaism.