What would you think if no one ever called you by name? This is what happened to Peter and Dinah Durrett. They were famous Kentucky Christians who arrived in the Lexington area in 1781 with a group of nearly 500 people known as the Traveling Church. The Durretts were enslaved African Americans owned by one of the Baptist pastors, Joseph Craig. In most of the books and other documents written about the Traveling Church, the pastors are always named as are some of the other leaders. Very occasionally, Peter Durrett is named. Usually he is called “Uncle Peter” or “Old Captain”. One of the best accounts of the Traveling Church talks about Peter Durrett but it never calls him anything but “Captain”. His wife is not named at all[1]. However, had it not been for Dinah Durrett, Peter might never have moved to Kentucky.
It was not because Peter and Dinah Durrett were unimportant that their names were not recorded. Peter Durrett was the first African American man to preach a sermon in Kentucky. He and Dinah started the first African American church in Kentucky. Peter was one of the scouts who prepared the way and led the Traveling Church over the mountains from Virginia. Do you think it could be that the fact that Peter and Dinah were enslaved that kept historians from naming them? Peter even had a white father, his former master.
Dinah’s likelihood of being named was even less than Peter’s. She was an enslaved African American and she was a woman. Not naming people makes doing historical research very difficult. We need names to search for individuals in plantation records, municipal and county records, and census records. We need names to connect parents to their children and grandchildren and to find marriage and death certificates or records of military service.
Naming people continues to be a way for
justice to be served. Think about the contemporary cries for racial justice
such as the protest call to “Say his (or her) name” after the death of George Floyd or Brianna Taylor, for example. As we at the Kentucky
Faith & Public History Education Project continue to research the Christian
men and women whose public affiliation as Christians made them succeed, we are
committed to find and call them by name. We won’t be content to speak in generalities or to
use pejorative nicknames or to call people by their roles. We will say their names
and we will do our best to find verifiable information about their lives. That will bring recognition to previously lost or marginalized stories as well as honor for their memory.
©2021 By Lesley Barker PhD
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