Smith’s Memorial Congragational Church in Brickdam will be celebrating its 171st anniversary this month.
A press release from the church said that the annual church service will be held on Sunday, November 23 at 9 am, and that the public is invited to join the congregation or observe the occasion.
Smith’s Church was built in memory of Rev John Smith of the London Missionary Society. He was sentenced to death by a court martial for the part he was alleged to have played in the 1823 rising on the East Coast Demerara, but he died of tuberculosis in prison on February 6, 1824, before a pardon sent from London by the King arrived.
Smith had first come to Demerara in 1817, to work in the Bethel Chapel on Le Resouvenir plantation on the East Coast. He succeeded Rev John Wray.
Against the wishes of the plantocracy he gave religious instruction to the enslaved on Le Resouvenir and surrounding plantations, and in defiance of the Governor’s instructions he also taught literacy.
Some of the leaders of 1823 were associated with the Bethel Chapel.
