A retired teacher volunteering at a Massachusetts archive has uncovered a lost piece of American religious history: a 178-year-old document signed by 116 Baptist ministers condemning slavery that had been missing for more than a century.
Jennifer Cromack made the discovery in May while sorting through 18th and 19th-century materials at the American Baptist archive in Groton, Massachusetts. The find resolves a decades-long search by church historians who feared the anti-slavery declaration had been lost forever.
The Discovery…