700 Acres From Planters and an Estate Worked by the Enslaved: How the Moravians First Held Land in Jamaica

• The Foster brothers gave the Moravians 700 acres near Santa Cruz in 1755
• The Carmel mission became a working estate that used enslaved labour
• After Carmel closed in 1823, the church bought Fairfield plantation
• A later chapel at Hopeton was built on land donated by a slaveholder

The Moravian Church’s story in Jamaica began with a gift of land, and a Gleaner history published in June 2016 showed how closely the mission’s growth was tied to the estates it held.

Writer Paul H Williams traced the mission from its start in 1754. The Foster brothers, planters who became troubled about the spiritual condition of the people they held in slavery, donated 700 acres near Santa Cruz in 1755. There the Moravians built their main mission station, Carmel, and the work spread quickly; by 1756, the article noted, they were able to baptise 77 people.

Carmel was not only a mission. It became a working estate that used enslaved labourers, and later a burial ground for missionaries. Under missionary John Lang, who led it from 1805 to 1818, “Carmel became a profitable estate,” Williams wrote. Other stations operated at Bogue, Two Mile Wood, Elim, Lancaster and Mesopotamia in Westmoreland.

When Carmel closed in 1823, the Moravians bought Fairfield plantation and converted its buildings into a chapel and schoolhouse for their new headquarters. They also established New Carmel Chapel at Hopeton in Westmoreland, on land donated by the slaveholder Henderson Scott.

The history is uncomfortable but important. Much of the land older Jamaican denominations still hold can be traced to gifts from planters and to estates that operated during slavery. That legacy sits behind modern debates over church land, from calls for churches to make idle acres available for housing to arguments about reparations and landlessness.

For Jamaicans at home and in the diaspora, knowing how church land was acquired helps explain why so many congregations sit on large rural properties, why some of those acres are now occupied informally, and why the question of what churches do with their land carries moral as well as financial weight.

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