Tuckahoe River Trip - Bishop A. W. Wayman Memorial Tour

Bishop Wayman's father, Francis Wayman, was born a slave in Caroline County in about 1783.   He was probably still a slave by 1812 but probably free by 1821, when A.W. Wayman was born. He was almost certainly free by 1831, when another son, Robert Francis, was born. 

During the early years of Francis Wayman's freedom, the family probably lived on the edge of economic survival.    A.W. Wayman remembers being born and raised in a log cabin, living on a staple of cornmeal, and keeping no flour in the house.  They ate flour biscuits only when itinerant preachers and other honored guests stayed in the home. 

But later as a free black, Francis Wayman was a "very successful" farmer , according to his son. His labors on his own farm probably yielded a variety of subsistence products for the family, plus surplus to sell, including sheep’s wool.  He and his wife, Matilda, had 12 children, mostly boys. 

According to his son, Francis Wayman "had the good fortune to learn to read, and so taught all his sons to read... The sand in the roads and the sides of the old frame houses were [my] copy books. Soon [I] was writing letters for [my] young friends to their young friends." 

Francis Wayman also taught his children not only how to read, but also how to work.  He sawed the handles of his plow shorter, so that young Alexander could work the fields at an early age. 

When he was fourteen, Alexander was hired out to Benjamin Kerby of Talbot County, whose children presumably helped him improve his reading and writing skills.  Alexander returned to Caroline County in 1836 and lived with one James Glanden.  Soon afterwards he was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The fact that young Wayman was hired out at an early age is further evidence that the Waymans were poor like most free blacks in Caroline County at that time. But by 1837, the elder Wayman had the means to travel to Philadelphia to visit friends.  His wife, Matilda, visited Alexander when he was living in Philadelphia in 1844.  Francis Wayman had his own carriage in which he travelled to Easton to meet itinerant preachers and travelled to Denton, were he served as one of the first laymen of the AME church. By the 1840s, the Waymans were still living on the family homestead in Tuckahoe Neck, but no longer in the log cabin in which Alexander was born.

Francis and Matilda Wayman lived to see all of their children reach adulthood -- one son a bishop (Alexander), one an elder (Robert), and another a local preacher (Charles).  In February 1868, Francis Wayman died, aged 85. His wife, Matilda, survived him two years and two months.  Wayman learned of his mother's death while he was living and working in Baltimore.  He wrote:  "She was only sick a few minutes, and then died.  She raised twelve children, and lived to see them all grow up; and all but three died, and then she passed away at a good old age. Some one asked her once, how many grandchildren she had? Her answer was, 'Three wagon loads.'"

Read the biographies of his relatives that Bishop Wayman wrote in his Cyclopædia of African Methodism, published in 1882.