Better known in his later years as a politician, journalist, and physician, Dr. Joseph Robert Love was the first black clergy person to serve in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. Born in the Bahamas on October 2, 1839, Love was educated at St. Agnes Parish School and Christ Church Grammar School in Nassau. He worked as a teacher before moving to Florida in 1866. In 1871, Bishop John F. Young of the Diocese of Florida ordained him a deacon. Later that year, he moved to Savannah, becoming the Deacon in Charge of St. Stephen’s Church. In 1872, citing discrimination in St. Stephen’s against those with darker skin color, he founded St. Augustine’s Church. Love moved to Buffalo, New York in 1876 to accept a call as Rector of St. Philip’s Church. While there, he was ordained a priest and then studied in the medical school at the University of Buffalo. In 1880, he was awarded his Doctor of Medicine degree, becoming the first black graduate of the school.
The Rev. Richard Bright was the first black Episcopal priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. He was born in 1866 in St. Thomas, then part of the Dutch West Indies. Bright was educated at St. Augustine Collegiate Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the General Theological Seminary in New York, where he graduated in 1891. Bishop Henry C. Potter ordained Bright a deacon the same year and he passed examinations for the priesthood and could have been ordained later the same year, but he had not yet attained the minimum age for a priest of 25.
He was ordained a priest in St. Stephen’s in Savannah on June 10, 1892, by Bishop C.K. Nelson of Georgia who noted he ordained him on behalf of the Bishop of New York where Bright was still canonically resident.
His wife, Nellie, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and educated in Europe as a teacher after she was denied entrance to schools in the United States. Together, Richard and Nellie established the first private kindergarten and primary school for blacks in Georgia in 1892. In 1909, he accepted appointment by Bishop F. F. Reese as “Archdeacon for the colored Work of the Diocese.”
The Bright family’s friendship with Caroline Rathbone, a white woman who later became his daughter’s godmother, appears in an article detailing Rathbone’s funeral, held in Evansville, Indiana. A black man’s officiating at a white woman’s funeral raised eyebrows. “Colored Man to Take Part in Funeral at St. Paul’s Church” announced in The Evansville Courier, December 23, 1901. The article mentions Bright was once Rathbone’s Sunday School student in New York.
Bright was a respected writer of religious pamphlets, and he wrote for the Episcopal newspaper, Church Advocate. The Library of Congress has an entry dated March 2, 1900, registering “St. Stephen’s Catechism” prepared by Rev. Richard Bright in 1892. After serving the Diocese of Georgia for almost twenty years, Bright moved his family from Savannah to accept an appointment in Philadelphia.
Other deacons and priests of the Diocese of Georgia came from the Caribbean, including The Revs. Samuel Minns and Joseph S. Atwell, who arrived here in the late 1800s already ordained.
Pictured: Dr. J. Robert Love (top); Excerpt of the St. Stephen’s Catechism written by the Rev. Richard Bright (bottom).
