The planter and merchant on whose estate the Silver Bluff Church was
constituted is deserving of special mention in connection with the
story of that people. We learn from White's _History of Georgia_, that
George Galphin was "a native of Ireland, emigrated soon after manhood
to America, and died at Silver Bluff, his residence, on the Savannah
River, in South Carolina, on the second of December, 1782, in the
seventy-first year of his age." N. W. Jones, in his history, quotes
William Bartram as saying that George Galphin was "a gentleman of very
distinguished talents and great liberality."[22]
The spirit of justice and kindness, it appears, was manifest in all
his dealings with the peoples of the weaker races, who were daily
about him. The red man and the black man alike saw in him a man of
kindly soul. David George, who was ever a British subject, described
his former master as an "anti-loyalist." N. W. Jones, speaking as an
American, pronounced him a "patriot." Neither spoke of him except to
praise. A master less humane, less considerate of the happiness and
moral weal of his dependents, less tolerant in spirit, would never
have consented to the establishment of a Negro church on his estate.
He might have put an end to the enterprise in its very incipiency, but
he did not. He fostered the work from the beginning. It was by his
consent that the gospel was preached to slaves who resided at Silver
Bluff. It was by his permission that the Silver Bluff Church was
established. It was he who permitted David George to be ordained to
the work of the ministry. It was he who provided the Silver Bluff
Church with a house of worship, by permitting his mill to be used in
that capacity. And it was he who gave the little flock a baptistry, by
placing his mill-stream at their disposal on baptizing occasions. But
we are satisfied that he had no conception of the far-reaching
influence of these deeds of kindness.
The truth is, the Galphins appear to have been masters of the
patriarchal type. Thomas Galphin, under whose beneficence the work at
Silver Bluff was renewed in postbellum time, was, as we shall see, as
much the benefactor and protector of Jesse Peter, as George Galphin
had been of David George before, and during the earlier stages of the
Revolutionary War.[23] Accessible records reveal the fact that John
Galphin was an Indian interpreter and a friend of the Cussetahs. It is
indeed suggestive that, in 1787, these Indians wished a Negro, whom
John Galphin owned, to be a messenger with one of their men to the
whites.