The Saviour and the Slaver

Learning that two brothers, cut from the exact same cloth, can lead very different lives, governed by very different ethical values, isn't exactly a new story – in fact, it’s one of the oldest, and one which didn’t end too well for Abel. However, the lives of Henry and George Leeves are unusual in their extreme difference – their legacies reveal quite what can happen when you land on the wrong side of history.

The Reverend Henry Leeves, 1790-1845

Henry and George Leeves were the second and third sons of the Reverend William Leeves and his wife Ann. Both brothers were born in Wrington, Somerset - Henry in 1790, George in 1794. After studying at Oxford, Henry followed his father into the priesthood and we know from a report in The Times that by 1817 he had become Chaplain to the British Army garrison on the island of Madeira. Clearly Henry got a taste for foreign travel, for an 1828 article in the Bristol Mirror, reporting on a talk he gives to a local Christian group, reveals he has spent the 1820s in Constantinople as the Anglican Chaplain to the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Other sources confirm one of the remarkable things he does there – for Henry becomes the first person to complete a translation of the Bible into modern Greek. Henry’s devotion to Christian beliefs does not rest merely in words however, for what the modest Henry fails to mention in his talk, is that he is also a hero of the 1821-29 Greek War of Independence. During the war Henry

“succoured many fugitive Greeks, concealed them in his house and saved them from deaths by the hands of the Turks, provided them with food and clothing, and sent them on their way rejoicing full of gratitude and praise.” (1).

If this wasn’t enough, Henry also takes up the cause of a number of Jews persecuted by the Ottoman regime, saving at least three from persecution or death and paying the costs involved in securing their freedom from his own funds.

Henry’s work saving Greeks doesn’t sit well with the Ottomans and so a change of location is inevitable and it isn't hugely surprising to find his next location is Athens, where he becomes the Chaplain to the British Embassy to the new Greek independent government. Whilst there, Henry was instrumental in the building of the oldest Anglican Church in Greece, St Pauls, which can be found not far from the foot of the hill of the Acropolis.

Henry was not the only Leeves boy to get the travelling bug; however, what his brother George did in his foreign adventures does not come anywhere close to the high standards set by his brother. Just as Henry followed in his father’s footsteps, so did George - before William Leeves took Holy Orders he had been in the army and almost certainly fought in the US War of Independence. George followed his father into the forces and to North America: after becoming a Midshipman in the navy, George emigrated to the USA and we know from local newspapers that by 1829 George had settled in Milledgeville, which at the time was the state capital of Georgia.

Whilst his brother is saving lives in Constantinople, quite what George Leeves does in the Deep South is brought into very sharp relief by the following advert that he places in his local paper in August 1843:

The Georgia Journal, August 29th 1843

The son and brother of a priest is selling an entire family of slaves, knowing full well that unless someone buys all five, the family will be permanently split apart. In 1850 the US Federal Government collects information on slaves for the first time and this reveals that George owns 19 slaves, making him one of the biggest slave-owners in Baldwin County. The schedule does not give names, but their records reveal something even more troubling - two of George’s slaves are listed as ‘mulatto’, meaning they are mixed race and almost certainly the outcomes of systemic sexual violence on female slaves by their owners. We do not know if this was the case with George’s slaves, but the stain of history is not on his side.

Henry Leeves’ live is tragically cut short when he dies in 1845 in Beirut, on his way, fittingly, to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although less deserving of a long life, George Leeves will go on to live until 1864, at the very decent age for the time of 70. But the lives the brothers led and the ethical values they cherished found new legacies in their children, who demonstrate that the extremes found in near relatives can live on in their offspring.

George Leeves’ youngest son, George D. Leeves, was also a slave-owner and such was George Jr’s devotion to slavery and to the way of the South, that at the 1861 outbreak of the US Civil War he enters the Confederate Army, joining the 12th Georgia Infantry, a regiment that fights in numerous famous battles of the war, including the Battle of Gettysburg.

George Jr’s cousin, Sophie Leeves, the eldest daughter of Henry, led a rather different life in the 1860s. She had converted to Catholicism in the 1850s, become a nun, and in 1862 was sent by her order to India to establish a school in Mangalore, an educational establishment still going strong to this day. Sophie also established her own foundation in India, which cared for and educated the poor in Karnataka province – meaning she is literally the Victorian version of Mother Teresa. This legacy has led her to become such a well-known figure in the Catholic Church in India, that in 2014 Pope Francis declared her ‘venerable’ – the second stage of four in becoming a saint.

Quite how the two Leeves brothers became so different will never be truly known. But they do provide a salutary lesson – don't make easy and lazy presumptions. Just because two people are brought up in the same household by the same parents, don't assume their believes, attitudes and actions will be governed by the same moral code. But we must also be careful not to be quick to form black and white judgements about Henry, George and their children. Missionary work is a highly contentious and controversial aspect of religious organisations, systematic of colonial regimes seeking to control and provide ‘correct’ moral and spiritual guidance to the subjugated. In contrast, can there be any defence of George and his son? Are there any good arguments in favour of slave owners? No, not really, but what if you lived in Georgia in the mid nineteenth century and you were born and brought up by a slave-owning family – can you be so sure that you wouldn’t have ended up fighting for the Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg?

(1) Anna Maria Moon (1873) In Memoriam : the Rev. W. Leeves, Author of the Air of "Auld Robin Gray" With a Few Notices of Other Members of His Family