Christian (formerly Frank)
Born: circa 1739
Died: 28 September 1789
Worked: 1771–1789
Residences: Guinea, Africa; South Carolina; Salem, NC

Frank was born in Guinea about 1739 and as a child was sold by one of his female kin to a slave ship and brought to South Carolina.[190] He was purchased by the Moravians of Salem in 1771 and on 12 October began working on a farm near town.[191]

One of the first enslaved African to work in Wachovia, Frank was also the first slave to be baptized by the Moravians in North Carolina. His baptism occurred on 27 August 1780 and so many people attended the ceremony that they filled Bethabara’s church.[192]

He took the name Christian at that time. He was the first slave in Salem to receive communion, which then afforded him more rights and privileges than those slaves who refused to convert. For instance, in 1783 he was allowed to marry a woman named Nancy, another slave, and in 1787 was allowed to move into Salem proper rather than on the outskirts of town.

Brought on as a mason’s assistant by Melchior Rasp and Johann Gottlieb Krause, Christian is noted as being “faithful and diligent in his work, and thus was loved by everyone.”[193] Given the length of time he worked in Salem, Christian contributed to the construction of many of the buildings attributed to Rasp and Krause.

Christian suffered a fall that injured his head on 19 September 1789. He died in Bethabara days later from his injury at the age of fifty. It was noted that he was the first enslaved individual to die in Bethabara, and was also the first to have his death commemorated by the town’s trombone choir.[194]
...

ENSLAVED LABOR - MORAVIAN CHURCH, SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA

The Moravians of the Wachovia Tract had a complex relationship with slavery. In the eighteenth century, white Moravians did not see a conflict between owning and hiring enslaved Africans and African Americans while at the same time worshipping beside them as spiritual equals. By the early nineteenth century, the chattel slavery and racial segregation found across the American South was also entrenched in Salem.

Enslaved workers were originally brought to Salem to help the Moravians in their initial efforts to construct the vital buildings in the town. The Moravians justified this decision because they were crucially short on labor during this time. By 1800 the Moravians in North Carolina owned approximately seventy enslaved workers, about a tenth of the total workforce in Wachovia. While many of those individuals worked on farms in Bethania and Friedberg, it was not uncommon for an enslaved African or African American man to be in Salem working on one of the many buildings being constructed. Most of these men were laborers, but some possessed skills in the building trades. By 1860, African Americans, both enslaved and free, comprised 22 percent the total population in the Salem District.

Source: The Enslaved Men Who Built Salem: A Biographical Look /Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts