The Foreign Missionary Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 turned its attention to this fruitful field.  In 1855, ten years after they began work, they had 19 religious and secular teachers, 11 day-schools, 400 pupils, and 484 members in their churches.  There were 13 mission-stations, and all the teachers were colored men.

We have said, a few pages back in this chapter, that the Methodist Church was first on the field when the colony of Liberia was founded.  We should have said one of the first; because we find, in “Gammell’s History of the American Baptist Missions,” that the Baptists were in this colony as missionaries in 1822, that under the direction of the Revs.  Lot Carey and Collin Teage, two intelligent Colored Baptists, a church was founded.  Mr. Carey was a man of most exemplary character.  He had received an education in Virginia, where he had resided as a freeman for some years, having purchased his freedom by his personal efforts, and where also he was ordained in 1821.

“In September, 1826, he was unanimously elected vice-agent of the colony; and on the return of Mr. Ashmun to the United States, in 1828, he was appointed to discharge the duties of governor in the interim,—­a task which he performed during the brief remnant of his life with wisdom, and with credit to himself.  His death took place in a manner that was fearfully sudden and extraordinary.  The natives of the country had committed depredations upon the property of the colony, and were threatening general hostilities.  Mr. Carey, in his capacity as acting governor, immediately called out the military forces of the colony, and commenced vigorous measures for repelling the assault and protecting the settlements.  He was at the magazine, engaged in superintending the making of cartridges, when by the oversetting of a lamp, a large mass of powder became ignited, and produced and explosion which resulted in the death of Mr. Carey, and seven others who were engaged with him.  In this sudden and awful manner perished and extraordinary man,—­one who in a higher sphere might have developed many of the noblest energies of character and who, even in the humble capacity of a missionary among his own benighted brethren, deserves a prominent place in the list of those who have shed lustre upon the African race.

“At the period of Mr. Carey’s death, the church of which he was the pastor contained a hundred members, and was in a highly flourishing condition.  It was committed to the charge of Collin Teage, who now returned from Sierra Leone, and of Mr. Waring, one of its members, who had lately been ordained a minister.  The influences which had commenced with the indefatigable founder of the mission continued to be felt long after he had ceased to live.  The church an Monrovia was increased to two hundred member; and the power of the gospel was manifested in other settlements of the Colonization Society, and even among the