Hugh Bryan (1699-1753) was an evangelical Christian and prominent white planter in the colony of South Carolina who mounted a brief but fiery challenge to the Anglican establishment and slaveholding hegemony. In 1742 he publicly stated and wrote that slavery was a sin and that God's punishment was evident and imminent. A Grand Jury indicted him for fomenting slave rebellion, a capital offense. Bryan recanted and apologized. He continued to support and promote the literacy of enslaved African Americans and their conversion to Christianity. He was a founder of the first non-Anglican church in South Carolina, the Stoney Creek Independent Presbyterian Chapel of Prince William Parish, in which both black and white worshippers were members. Andrew Bryan, an enslaved African American who worked for Hugh's brother, Jonathan, was among the worshippers. Andrew Bryan founded the First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah.
Origin and family
Bryan was born near Pocotaligo in 1699. He was second of four children of Janet Cochran and Joseph Bryan, who had emigrated from Hereford in 1680. The first, also named Joseph, was born in 1697, Hannah in 1706, and Jonathan in 1708. Janet Cochran died three weeks after Jonathan was born.
Hugh Bryan inherited the family's holdings in 1735. The Bryans raised beef, rice, and indigo on plantations and operated ferries in the southeastern corner of the colony of South Carolina.
Hugh Bryan married three times. His first wife is unnamed and her date of death unknown. His second wife was Catherine Barnwell, who died in 1740. She was the daughter of John Barnwell. His third wife was Mary Prioleau, who survived Bryan, and married his friend William Hutson in 1758. Hugh Bryan had at least one daughter, who was a married adult in 1741, when he wrote a letter to her. He also had at least one son, to whom he addressed two letters in 1740 while the son was attending school in Charleston. In 1751 he wrote in his diary that he visited a daughter's grave.
Captured during Yemassee War
In 1715 Bryan was taken captive in the Yamasee War and enslaved by a leader of one of the native American groups who were fighting the English settlers. Bryan was taken to St. Augustine and held for a year before he was released. During his captivity he was provided with a Bible and a book by William Beveridge (bishop). Bryan later wrote that these works made him receptive to the religious ideas of dissenters and George Whitefield.
Participation in colonial affairs
In 1733 Bryan was elected to the Royal Assembly. In 1735-37 he held positions of authority in St. Helena parish. Bryan was involved in defense of the colony, which was under threat from the Spanish and Native Americans, some of whom joined with the Spanish to try to prevent the English from taking control of more land. He and Nathaniel Barnwell (who was to become his brother-in-law) petitioned the assembly for funds to build a fort to provide refuge from a sea attack, and Bryan took it upon himself to outfit a scout boat.
Religious experiences and conversion
In 1735, Hugh Bryan delivered cattle to Salzburger emigrants in Georgia, a colony founded as a refuge for dissenters. He returned several times to deliver more supplies and stayed to socialize and discuss religion. In 1739 George Whitefield, the revivalist instrumental in the First Great Awakening, began preaching in South Carolina and Georgia. Whitefield's preaching converted Bryan's wife, Catherine. At her urging, Bryan met with Whitefield in the summer of 1739 and began to struggle with his own faith. Catherine attributed her recovery from a serious disease to her faith, and Hugh himself, after agonized self-criticism, declared that he, too, had been "born again" into faith.
Warning of God's wrath directed at slaveholders
Several events in 1739 and 1740 convinced Bryan that God was punishing white Christians for their treatment of their enslaved workers. In the summer and fall of 1739 an epidemic of yellow fever ravaged the populace. That September slaves digging drainage channels near the Stono River, about twenty miles from Charleston, broke into a warehouse seeking food at the end of a long day of heavy labor. They killed two white men in the store, took their weapons, and killed about two dozen more white people before they were caught. In 1740 a fast-moving fire destroyed hundreds of buildings in Charleston.