Gaulfin. Having been connected with the Silver Bluff Church from the
very first, and only separated from it during the Revolutionary War
and the period of readjustment immediately thereafter, Jesse Peter was
eminently fitted, at least in one particular, to take up the work at
Silver Bluff which David George had abandoned in the year 1778. He
knew the place and he loved the people. Silver Bluff was his home, and
there he was held in high esteem. Moreover, he possessed what is
essential to ministerial success everywhere, deep sincerity,
seriousness of purpose, knowledge of the Bible, an excellent spirit,
and the ability to deliver, with profit and pleasure, the message of
the truth. Jonathan Clarke, and Abraham Marshall, who knew him
personally, have left on record beautiful testimonials of his work and
his worth.[28]

Why this young man, who had obtained his freedom by going to the
British at the fall of Savannah,[29] in 1778, remained in America to
resume the condition of a slave, after the Revolutionary War, is not
known. It is known, however, that, unlike George Liele and David
George, men of adventurous spirit, Jesse Peter was not a pioneering
worker in strange fields. If, indeed, he ever traveled beyond Kiokee,
Georgia, in the one direction, and the city of Savannah in the other,
we have failed to note the fact. It is known, too, that he had an
indulgent master, and it is possible that he preferred a state of
nominal slavery, under his protection, to a probable state of want and
hardship in a foreign land. Or it may be he was willing to die for the
cause, and so deliberately entered again into the old condition of
bondage in order to enjoy the privilege of preaching, where Liele and
George had labored in other days.

It is to be presumed that Jesse Peter was regularly ordained to the
work of the Gospel ministry. We take this view because he exercised
the duties and privileges which ordination implies, without ever being
called in question for doing so. His three years of association with
Liele and George, in Savannah, during the British occupancy, moreover,
afforded him ample opportunity to be publicly and regularly
consecrated to his life-work. Certainly Abraham Marshall, of Kiokee,
Georgia, would not have associated himself with Jesse Peter in the
ordination of Andrew Bryan, of Savannah, in 1788, if Jesse Peter had
not himself been ordained to the work of the ministry.

Conditions in the earlier stages of Jess