church, we have
appointed him to preach the Gospel, and to administer the
ordinances, as God in his providence may call.[202]

Out of the midst then of great persecutions Andrew Bryan became the
official head of an established church.

The death of Jonathan Bryan, the master of Andrew Bryan, marked an
epoch in the useful career of this pioneer preacher. By consent of the
parties concerned, he purchased his freedom for the sum of fifty
pounds. He then bought a lot in Yamacraw and built on it a residence
near the rough building Sampson Bryan had built some time before. When
the Bryan estate was finally divided, the lot on which Sampson had
been permitted to build became the property of an attorney, who
married a daughter of the deceased Mr. Bryan and received 12 pounds a
year for it. In these readjustments there were no serious
interruptions to the worship of Andrew Bryan's congregation. The seven
hundred members worshiped not only without molestation, but in the
presence, and with the approbation and encouragement of many of the
white people.[203]

With this large membership Bryan needed but did not have a regular
assistant. In his absence his brother Sampson preached for him.
Bryan's plan was to divide his church when the membership became too
large for him to serve it efficiently. This finally had to be done.
This branch of the church was organized as the Second African Baptist
Church of Savannah with Henry Francis, a slave of Colonel Leroy
Hammond, as pastor. Francis showed such remarkable ability that some
white men, who considered him unusual, purchased his freedom that he
might devote all of his time to his chosen work. Not many years
thereafter Bryan's church again reached the stage of having an
unwieldy number and it was further divided by organizing in another
part of the city the Third African Baptist Church.

Bryan exercised the greatest of care in his public and private
obligations and manifested much interest in his family. In 1800 he
wrote Dr. Rippon: "With much pleasure, I inform you, dear Sir, that I
enjoy good health, and am strong in body, at the age of sixty-three
years, and am blessed with a pious wife, whose freedom I have
obtained, and an only daughter and child who is married to a free man,
tho' she, and consequently under our laws, her seven children, five
sons and two daughters, are slaves. By a kind Providence I am well
provided for, as to worldly comforts, (tho' I have had very l