Many of the early Black residents in New Amsterdam came from the Kingdom of the Kongo. It was a Christian country that built The Cathedral of the Holy Saviour of Kongo, Zaire, Angola, on May 6 – July 6, 1491. That year, King Nzinga had converted to Christianity and urged the Kongo nobility and peasant classes to follow suit. To varying degrees, the Kongo kingdom remained Christian for the next 200 years.  It was one of the largest nations in southern Africa at that time. African Christianity perhaps goes back to its Jewish roots in 900 BC in Ethiopia. Photo: Madjey Fernandes/CC BY-SA 3.0.

On May 5, 1641, two Christian widowers, Anthony of Angola and Lucie of Angola, formed a new family. Pastor Everardus Bogardus presided over the ceremony. He and his Norwegian wife Anna used ceremonies like weddings and baptisms to strengthen African families and to encourage their development of a free Christian community. Africans in New Amsterdam were mainly slaves but also included those who were indentured and free. The tone of Anna and Everardus’s actions was to encourage the encouragement of the spiritual and demographic growth of the African community as free and equal to everyone else.

The Bogarduses felt particularly obligated to the Africans because almost all of those who first settled in New Amsterdam were Christians or from Christianized families. Many had Christian baptismal names like Emanuel and Antonio (named after Saint Anthony of Labon/Padua, a very important iconic figure both among the residents in the Kingdom of the Kongo. This kingdom, which included Angola, was officially an African Christian nation. Going against African tradition, the king of the Kongo decreed that no Christian Kongolese could be sold into slavery, but during a civil war, the opponents traded their captives into slavery for military weapons.

God-parenting built lines of support between the Black and White families. “Nowhere else, not even in the English colonies, were black slaves so freely baptized or married by the minister,” notes historian Willem Frijoff. Two-thirds of Black baptisms in New Netherlands came while he was pastor, supported by his wife Anna.

“Retro Flashes” are Journey’s quick takes on moments of history that have made New York City what it is, what New Yorkers are, and, maybe, what it will be.