The Great Baptism at the Waterfront
A visiting preacher draws hundreds to the Seattle tideflats for an intensive, hours-long baptismal marathon that captivated the city’s prominent citizens.
I heard a voice say 'I’ve got to have patience,' and I heard his voice say 'I see a new angel,' and I saw the bridegroom. If they want to live, I have and shall attend today. Rev. Jasper, the great colored preacher, author of the 'Jasperian' discourses, held a service today. It was a day for the colored people, though many were present. Regardless of private dealings, such was their urge to attend that many prominent city officials were there. A large number of those baptized were converts from the colored churches, brought over by John Jamieson. He commenced at ten o’clock in the morning and concluded at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. He has many hundreds more to baptize yet, this being as many as he could attend to. The old exhorter remarked at the close of the ceremony: 'I feel powerful; my arm lifted all them into and out of the water, and I got new strength from the Lord.' Mr. Jasper has just returned from his lecturing tour.
“I feel powerful; my arm lifted all them into and out of the water, and I got new strength from the Lord.”
This 1878 account captures the spiritual fervor of Seattle's early Black community, centering religious life near the old waterfront. Today, the geography of these baptisms—the tideflats—has been entirely reclaimed and paved over, serving as a reminder of how much of Seattle’s physical and social history was literally buried under the city’s industrial expansion.
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