Joseph Gould Watkins

Joseph Gould Watkins, a free Black man, schoolmaster and lay reader in the Anglican church in the Bahamas, early pioneer of Black education.

1. Joseph Gould Watkins trained to be a ship's carpenter like his father George but gave it up to become an assistant at William Paul's school, which he had also attended. A highly successful schoolmaster he became Head of Bray's Associates School and St Paul's Chapel School in the Bahamas and a lay reader in the Anglican Church, commanding the respect (though not the salary and titles) of his white compatriots.

1. Whittington B. Johnson, Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784-1834: The Nonviolent Transformation from a Slave to a Free Society (University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2000) pp. 52-53, 62, 104-105, 141.