By Christopher W. Crocker

I began frequenting the Necropolis Cemetery in Cabbagetown shortly after beginning to teach at Toronto Baptist Seminary in 2019.

I incorporated a visit to the cemetery as part of a day’s walking tour of nineteenth-century Toronto and Ontario Baptist history. This allowed students the opportunity to visit the site of a number of Baptist worthies buried there. One such figure is Washington Christian, pastor of the First Coloured Calvinistic Baptist Church of Toronto (1834). On our first class visit, however, we could not find the grave, though we had been clearly directed by cemetery staff to Q15 (south). Finally, one student spotted the remaining corner of a flat stone mostly covered in grass. Cutting away the sod we found him! (Subsequently, I clear the grass upon every visit).

Washington Christian ….

• Arrived in York (now Toronto) about the year 1833 and became a member of the March Street Baptist Church pastored by Rev. Alexander Stewart
• Founded what would later be called the First Coloured Calvinistic Baptist Church, Toronto, in 1834
• Visited Jamaica in 1843–44 to raise funds to clear the church of its building debt from 1841;
• Advocated for Sunday schools, temperance and literacy;
• Itinerated throughout Baptist associations in Canada West and helped form other African congregations in the province;
• Was interred in the Potter’s Field in 1850 but reinterred in the Necropolis in 1862. 

A biography has been written by Ontario Baptist pastor, Glenn Tomlinson of Sovereign Grace Community Church Sarnia.

His grave stone, which is largely illegible, reads:

“In memory of
REV. WASHINGTON CHRISTIAN
Founder of the First Coloured Calvinistic Baptist Church, Toronto, 1834
Died 3rd of July, 1850,
Aged 75 years
Also of his wife,
ANN CHRISTIAN.
Died 18th of March, 1862,
Aged 62 years.

Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life, 
he that believeth in me tho he be dead yet 
shall he live.
 St John 1 Chap 25.1.”

Perhaps this summer you’ll take a stroll at the Necropolis and see if you can find the resting place of Washington Christian yourself. Regardless, pause to remember his contribution to the Baptist cause in Toronto and beyond.

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Christopher W. Crocker, PhD, is Associate Professor of Church History at the Toronto Baptist Seminary. He is also Treasurer of the Canadian Baptist Historical Society.

**The views of this Blog represent those of the author, and not necessarily the CBHS.**