Newport Gardner (born Occramer Marycoo, 1746–1826) was an African American

singing school A singing school is a school in which students are taught to sightread vocal music. Singing schools are a long-standing cultural institution in the Southern United States. While some singing schools are offered for credit, most are informal program ...

master and composer. He was an early proponent of the

Back-to-Africa movement The back-to-Africa movement was based on the widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement wa ...

Musical career

Gardner was transported to the

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

as a slave at the age of fourteen, where he was sold to Caleb Gardner, a young merchant in

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New Yor ...

. After showing an ability for making music, Gardner's wife arranged for Newport to study with a singing master, most likely Andrew Law. In 1791, Gardner won a lottery in which he secured enough money to buy freedom for himself and his family. Gardner rented the upstairs of a house in Newport, Rhode Island, where he started his own singing school. He was also a composer, and started writing music at the age of eighteen possibly becoming published as early as 1803 with the song ''Crooked Shanks'' from the collection ''A Number of Original Airs, Duettos and Trios''. He also composed the ''Promise Anthem''. Although the music has been lost, the text is still preserved and is based on passages from the Bible ( Jeremiah 30:1-3, 10;

Mark 7 Mark 7 is the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. This chapter explores Jesus' relationships with both fellow Jews and Gentiles. Jesus speaks with the Pharisees and scribes, and then with his discipl ...

:27-28).

Church activities

Gardner was also a prominent member in the religious and educational communities of Newport. He served as a deacon in the First Congregational Church, and as headmaster at a school for black children. Gardner also helped found the Colored Union Church, Newport's first black church, in 1824. The Congregational Church in Boston ordained him as a deacon the following year. Gardner was also a founder and early member of the Free African Union Society in Newport, the first African benefit society in the United States.

Return to Africa and death

In January 1826 at the age of 80, Gardner sailed from Boston on the brig ''Vine'' with 31 fellow Africans to Liberia. The ship made it to Liberia, but many in the party including Gardner fell ill with fever and died within a year. Gardner was buried, as he had always wished, in Africa.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardner, Newport 1746 births 1826 deaths 18th-century American composers 18th-century American slaves 18th-century male musicians 18th-century musicians 19th-century American composers 19th-century American male musicians African-American composers African-American male composers African-American music educators Free Negroes Musicians from Newport, Rhode Island People of colonial Rhode Island