Two African descent men came to the British Isles in 1881 from Canada. Josephus O’Banyoun was an official of the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. Founded and run by black people, it was mainly based in Ontario (where today its buildings are often noted as historic monuments, and ten remain active churches) and active in Christian missionary work in the Caribbean. With O’Banyoun was W. J. Butler, who was described as ‘son of an African Chief, and 22 years as a Slave’ (Luton Weekly Reporter, 26 November 1881, page 4). The pair toured widely, with O’Banyoun singing ‘Jubilee Songs in their true negro character’ (ibid).

Most of the venues were nonconformist churches and halls, such as the Rotunda Church in Aldershot where both men preached in October 1881 (Aldershot Military Gazette, 8 October 1881, page 8). O’Banyoun gave three sermons there on Christmas Day too (Aldershot Military Gazette, 24 December 1881, page 8). Both men preached in Northampton on 4 December, when the Northampton Mercury of 3 December 1881 (page 1) also noted they had been appointed by their bishop ‘to raise funds for the education of Negroes as Missionaries to Central Africa’. They were delegates to the Methodist conference in London. Contacts made there seem to have led to opportunities to preach, and O’Banyoun was noted as the founder of a troupe of Jubilee Singers when both men were at the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Horsemarket, Northampton in mid-December (Northampton Mercury, 10 December 1881, page 10). Two months later both men were at the Methodist Church in Stokefields, Guildford when O’Banyoun preached and Butler addressed the children at the Sunday School (West Surrey Times, Guildford, 4 February 1882, page 5).

They seem to have returned to Canada, with Butler reappearing in Britain in 1884. He is named as ‘of the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada’ by the Ulster Echo of 3 May 1884 (page 2) which said he was to appear at the University Road Church ‘tomorrow’. The following week it noted Butler was to preach at Hermon Hall. Another Ulster newspaper, the Northern Whig of Belfast, carried an advertisement on its front page on 5 May 1884 that ‘The Rev. W. J. Butler, a Coloured Minister of the Canadian Conference, will deliver a lecture this (Monday) evening’ on John Brown: His Times and American Slavery. This was scheduled for the Ormeau Road Church, and tickets cost three pence. His final lecture in Belfast was on slave life, and scheduled for 14 May 1884.

Butler was with the Canadian Jubilee Singers in Sheffield, when, according to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of 3 March 1886 (page 1) he was to describe his slave life, and escape by the Underground Railway to Canada, at the Trinity Wesleyan Church in Highfield, Sheffield. A collection was to be made for the African Mission work.

Butler is untraced after that, but the Canadian Jubilee Singers (3 female, 4 male) appeared in southern Ireland, in Cork in December 1886 (Cork Constitution 8 December 1886, page 2). They moved north, to Ulster, into February 1887 (Newry Reporter, 8 January 1887, page 3, Londonderry Sentinel, 24 February 1887, page 3 and Colereine Chronicle 26 February 1887, page 6.

The Amherstburg Freedom Museum in Ontario, founded in 1975, noted O’Banyoun’s role in the church and with the singers. Neither he, Butler or the Canadian Jubilee Singers are named in Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Yale UP, 1971).

What impact the two men – and the seven singers – had in Victorian Britain remains undiscovered.