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LE JAU, FRANCIS 243sionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).In 1706 the SPG appointed him to be a missionary in South Carolina, and soonafter his arrival in that colony, he was elected rector of St. James Church in GooseCreek (located in the low country outside of Charleston).Le Jau took an exceptionally active interest in the evangelization of both AmericanIndians and enslaved Africans in his parish. Although he never challengedthe institution of slavery, he braved the opposition of many planters who objectedto the religious instruction he offered to their slaves. To calm the fears of slaveholdersabout the liberating implications of the Christian gospel, he required anyslave whom he converted to take an oath prior to his or her baptism. Whenenslaved Africans were baptized, they swore in the presence of their masters thatthey did not believe that the sacrament freed them from their civil status as slaves.They also agreed neither to practice polygamy nor to take part in the “feasts,dances, and merry meetings” (i.e., the remnants of traditional African religiouscustoms) in which other slaves often participated on Sundays and holidays. Despitethis heavy-handed requirement, most slaveholders in Le Jau’s parish stillcontinued to resist his evangelistic efforts.In July 1717 the bishop of London not only made Le Jau his commissary inSouth Carolina but also appointed him rector of St. Philip’s Church in Charleston.However, he became ill and died in Goose Creek before he was able to assumethat new position.BibliographyA. The Carolina Chronicle of Dr. Francis Le Jau, 1706–1717, ed. Frank J. Klingberg(Berkeley, 1956).B. ANB 13, 460–61; DAB 11, 158; EDC, 299; WWWA Historical vol. 1607–1896, 311;Arthur Henry Hirsch, “Reverend Francis Le Jau, First Rector of St. James Church,Goose Creek, S.C.,” Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina 34(1929): 25–47; Frank J. Klingberg, “The Indian Frontier in South Carolina as Seenby the S.P.G. Missionary,” Journal of Southern History 5 (1939): 479–500; S.C.Bolton, “South Carolina and the Reverend Francis Le Jau: Southern Society andthe Conscience of an Anglican Missionary,” HMPEC 40 (1971): 63–80; Robert S.Matteson, “Francis Le Jau in Ireland,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 78(1977): 83–91; Annette Laing, “ ‘Heathens and Infidels’? African Christianizationand Anglicanism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1700–1750,” Religion andAmerican Culture 12 (2002): 197–228; Edgar Legare Pennington, The ReverendFrancis Le Jau’s Work among Indians and Negro Slaves (Baton Rouge, La., 1935).