Color Me Included The African Americans of Hampton's First Church and its Descendant Parishes, 1670-1826 by Deborah B. Knowlton, M.Div.

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Softcover, $22.00, 240 pgs, 6×9″.
ISBN 978-1-937721-28-2
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Color Me Included

The African Americans of Hampton’s First Church and its Descendant Parishes, 1670-1826
by Deborah B. Knowlton, M.Div.

Color Me Included is the result of the three-year historical and spiritual search of minister Deborah Knowlton, as she transcribed clergy records from the Archives of the First Congregational Church of Hampton, New Hampshire. In these handwritten, primary sources, she discovered details of the lives of African Americans, captured over 156 years by twelve ministers. The records informed the author’s research, as she rediscovered the names and partial histories of over twenty-seven African American men, women and children of Hampton, Hampton Falls, Kingston, North Hampton, Seabrook, Kensington, Kingston, East Kingston, Sandown, and Danville, New Hampshire.

About the Author

Deborah Knowlton lived as a child on a farm that straddled the town line between Hampton Falls and Exeter, New Hampshire. Educated locally, she attended the University of New Hampshire and Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Center, Massachusetts. She felt the call to ordained ministry in the Exeter Congregational Church and has served parishes over the last thirty-eight years in New Hampshire and Connecticut. She currently serves the First Congregational Church in Hampton. As she read through the ancient church records during the church’s 375th anniversary year, she was inspired by what they revealed. Although the history of each parish she served was complex and beautiful, her investigation into Hampton’s eighteenth-century African American members felt like discovering neighbors she never knew. Color Me Included is her first book.