The Rev. George F. Bragg, D.D., was born into an Episcopalian family on January 25, 1863 in Warrenton, North Carolina. He was the grandson of a salve who helped to found St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church for Negroes in Petersburg, VA.
In 1879 he campaigned for the Readjuster Party in Virginia, which endorsed black voting and state-supported higher education for blacks. He was appointed a page and postmaster in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1881 and began the publication of a secular weekly entitled “The Lancet for African-Americans” the following year.
He reentered the theological department of the Bishop Payne Divinity School in 1885 and retitled his newspaper the “Afro-American Churchman” that same year. Rev. Bragg was ordained a deacon in 1887 in Norfolk, VA where he successfully challenged the diocese’s practice of keeping black men in deacon’s orders for five years or more, and entered the priesthood in 1888.
Rev. Bragg served as rector of St. James First African Church in Baltimore, MD from 1891 until his death in 1940. He also knew how to connect with the social needs of his people and established the Maryland Home for Friendless Colored Children in 1899.
The early history of African-Americans and the Episcopal Church would be nearly impossible to recover without the historiographical work of George Freeman Bragg. He served as the secretary and historiographer of the Conference of Church Workers Among the Colored People for 35 years beginning in 1882.
*Rev. Bragg is pictured above seated in the middle between two of his sons.
Source: www.Episcopalarchives.org