"Gowan-Pamphlet" (1779-1807)

Was an African American preacher who mistered to a congregation in and near Williamsburg.He started his pastoral ministry while he was an enslaved man in the household of Jane Vode,a tavern keeper who lived in Williamsburg and then Manchester.After Jane died,he became the property of her son,David Miller,who who freed Gowan in 1793. Gowan led a congregation that evolved from a small,Clandestine group of worshippers late in the 1770s to an assembly of 500,composed "wholly of black people,or rather people of color," that in 1793 was officially recognized by the Dover Baptist Association.As an enslave African American, he often faced opposition to his mission.In or about 1783,a local Baptist organization attempted to stop him from preacher because of his color.Later,in 1793,he was accused of participating in a multistate slave conspiracy.(Nothing came of the accusation).By 1805,the preacher owned a quarter of Williamsburg city lot,fourteen acres in James City County,and a horse.He last appears in the historical record in 1807,when he attended a Dover Baptist Association meeting and paid personal property taxes in James City County.Gowan is honored as the early pastor of Williamsburg's historic Baptist Church.