While the armies of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe destroyed flourishing civilisations in the New World in the “name of the Prince of Peace” to ease their insatiable appetites for wealth, servants of the Church toiled to “rescue” the souls of the survivors, only to have them slave away their lives for unconscionable colonists.

The Treaty of Tordisillas had divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, and it remained that way until the second half of the 17th Century when Protestant England wrested Jamaica from Catholic Spain.

The contributions of different Protestant denominations to the development of Manchester can be described as phenomenal. The Church, through the work of missionaries, built churches, founded communities, established schools, and provided social welfare to Manchester’s slaves and their descendants.

After the era of the missionaries, the organised denominations continued the work. Consequently, the history of Manchester is intimately intertwined with the activities of the Church in the parish.

Within 100 years of the arrival of the Spaniards in the New World at the end of the 15th Century, 90 per cent of the native population disappeared. Under the advice of Roman Catholic priest Bartolomeo de Las Casas, African slaves replaced them as the primary source of labour.

Manchester, with its more than 80 per cent limestone surface and mountains as high as 2,770 feet above sea level, was unsuitable for the profitable production of sugarcane. However, the parish had its fair share of plantations, producing mainly coffee and pimento. These plantations became the “vineyards” of Protestant missionaries, mainly Moravians and Presbyterians, where hundreds of slaves laboured for relatively few colonial masters and a few missionaries worked to rescue the souls of the “heathen”.

One main reason for the founding of the parish was the people’s strong desire for an accessible religious centre, hence the construction of Manchester’s second oldest public building, St Mark’s Mandeville Parish (Anglican) Church. The church preserves the memories of those who were held as prisoners in its belfry during the slave uprising of 1831 and the cemetery protects the remains of English soldiers who were garrisoned in Mandeville but fell victims to the Yellow Fever outbreak in the mid-19th century.

Three years after the uprising, freedom arrived in all its glory, however, the former colonial masters squeezed out the last bit of labour they could from the former slaves during the Apprenticeship Period.

Once again, the Church took the lead in positioning the freedmen to live as free citizens. The missionaries, mainly Moravians, quickly realised that manumission alone was not good enough for the freedmen. They made it their duty to acquire as much land as possible to enable the freedmen to own property. The result was the founding of “free villages” in places such as Maidstone, Porus, and Walderston and the establishment of other prosperous communities in the parish.

Some freedmen who wanted to become independent coffee and pimento farmers migrated to Manchester, albeit under the benevolence of missionaries. However, the cultivation of seasonal cash crops dominated instead.

One such crop is the Irish potato, first introduced into Jamaica in the community of Bethany by a minister of the Bethany Moravian Church, established in 1840. The profitable cultivation of the crop eventually gave birth to the successful Christiana Potato Growers’ Co-operative.

One way of defining a society is by its level of education. The Church took the lead in procuring funds for the construction of schools, often supplementing that generated by government. Often, private landowners donated land, and so schools were erected at sites where assistance could be maximised.

In 1840, the Presbyterians started the first Presbyterian Theological College in Jamaica at New Broughton, near the New Broughton Church. Later, they established an elementary school on land donated by a private citizen. In 2005, the United Church established the International University of the Caribbean, basing one of its campuses in Manchester.

The Roman Catholic Church also influenced the perception of Manchester as the “education-oriented parish”. In Mandeville, the new Mount St Joseph Catholic High School is sited at the same location as the former St Paul of the Cross Catholic School that I attended in the late 1960s.

Interestingly, the nearby Mount St Joseph Preparatory School occupies the site of what was Mount St Joseph Academy. In Christiana, Sacred Heart Academy is located on the grounds of Sacred Heart Church. Catholic College of Mandeville offers tertiary level training to teachers.

Church Teachers’ College, Bishop Gibson High School and deCarteret College are all progeny of the Anglican Church. The present property on which Manchester High School stands was purchased in 1948 from the Anglican Church, which donated an extra two acres to allow the minister, Rev John Redmayne, to use the grounds as a walkway from the Manse, then located on Perth Road, to the church.

Another dominant force providing primary, secondary, and tertiary education is the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The movement started in Jamaica in the early 1890s, and since then the Adventists have established many educational institutions, but none as impressive as those located on a 200-acre property two miles south of Mandeville.

They include NCU Early Childhood Institution, West Indies College Preparatory School (over 75 years old), Victor Dixon High School, formerly West Indies College High, and Northern Caribbean University (NCU). Both secondary and tertiary institutions had their beginnings in the West Indian Training School, relocated from St Catherine to Manchester in 1919. Today, NCU, with its international student body, holds the honour of being Manchester’s first university.

Manchester also leads with charitable organisations: The internationally renowned Salvation Army operates Windsor Lodge and Hanbury Children’s Homes. The Roman Catholic Church operates St John Bosco Boys’ Home, while another Christian group operates Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf and Jamaica Deaf Village.

Sunset Rehabilitation Centre for ageing prisoners in New Broughton was originally established as an orphanage by the Presbyterians, who also established New Broughton People’s Co-operative Bank.

Quite apart from the its documented benevolence, there is also a tragic side associated with the Church in Manchester’s story. On the night of September 1, 1957, the community of Kendal became the site of Jamaica’s worst train wreck when 171 of 1,600 people who boarded the train in Kingston for its round trip to Montego Bay were killed and over 700 others injured. They were participants in a one-day excursion organised by St Anne’s Catholic Church in Kingston. Many of the dead were buried on-site in a mass grave.

For two centuries, the Church has influenced Manchester’s development. The Church was involved when Manchester was just an idea in the thoughts of the discontented citizens of Mile Gully, May Day, and Carpenters Mountain. On this, the eve of Manchester’s 200th birthday on December 13, 2014, the story of the growth of the parish cannot be separated from its intimate connection with the Church.

— Donald Blair is a retired professor of geography & Middle Eastern, Medieval European and World History who resides in Mandeville, Manchester.