Scots-Irish Reverend John Moorhead of County Down, Established the Church of Presbyterian Strangers in Boston in 1729

Rev. John Moorhead, portrait by Peter Pelham, 1751

In 1729, Scots–Irish Presbyterian Reverene John Moorhead, formerly of Newtonards, County Down, established the Church of the Presbyterian Strangers, initially with a congregation of thirty parishioners,. They built an Irish Meeting House in a converted barn at the corner of Berry Street and Long Lane (now Channing and Federal Street).

As church historian Harriett E. Johnson writes in Handbook of the Arlington Street Church, (1929) these Scots-Irish were “Good, quiet, law-abiding citizens . . .. [W]ith their sober, steadfast, hardworking, moral philosophy of life they constituted an excellent balance to the idealistic, variable [Puritan], who so often preached freedom, but practiced intolerance and bigotry.”

The Church of the Presbyterian Strangers had prospered enough so that the modest barn was replaced by a proper church in 1744; that Church later was the site in 1788 chosen to consider the adoption of the Federal Constitution. By 1749, twenty years after the church was formed, Reverend Moorhead had baptized more than 1,200 children. The congregation grew prosperous over the years and Reverend Moorhead remained the pastor until his death in 1773.

The Irish Presbyterians appeared eager to bring into the church a number of their slaves, and congregation’s records indicate a number of African-American children being baptized in the church. Between 1737 and 1748 James Mayes baptized “three Negro children, Rosanna, John, and Sarah,” all presumably the children of slaves. In 1742 a slave named Jeffrey baptized his son Jeffrey, while church member William Baird had a “Negro boy baptized Thomas.” And in 1742 “Cato and Flora, a Negro man and woman” were married by Reverend Moorhead.

Reverend Moorhead and his family also had a deeply personal connection with Black slave Phyllis Wheatley, considered America’s first Black poet. Reverend Moorhead was one of 18 judges who formally attested that Phyllis Wheatley was the true author of her poetry, prior to it being published. Others on the panel included John Wheatley, James Bowdoin and John Hancock, according to the Phyllis Wheatley Historical Society.

Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society 

The cover piece of Wheatley’s poetry book was illustrated by the Moorhead family’s slave, Scipio Moorhead, whose talent as an artist was brought to the fore by the Reverend’s wife, Sarah. Phyllis Wheatley published a poetic tribute to Scipio in her book, writing, "To S.M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works," according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society 

In 1773, the year her popular book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published, Wheatley penned a moving poem to Miss Mary Moorhead, the daughter of Reverend Moorhead, who had died in December. Wheatley’s poem is titled “Elegy to Miss Mary Moorhead, on the Death of her Father, The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead,” and reads in part: 

Involved in clouds of woe, Maria mourns,
And various anguish wracks her Soul by turns;
See thy loved parent languishing in Death,
His Exit watch, and catch his flying breath…
Thine, and the Church’s Sorrows I deplore;
Moorhead is dead, and Friendship is no more.

Though a liberal minister, Reverend Moorhead was a staunch loyalist to the British Crown. Many in his congregation were sea captains and merchants directly affected by the taxes, while others in the church stood to gain from the British presence. When Moorhead died in late 1773, the congregation turned on itself and church services were suspended for several years as the war got under way.

This Boston congregation, also referred to as the Church of the Presbyterian Strangers, Known variously as “the Meeting House in Long Lane” and “the Federal Street Church,” the congregation was named the Arlington Street Church in 1862, accord to church notes.

Test + Research, Michael Quinlin