The staggering expansion of the early Salvation Army from the United Kingdom to the rest of the world was driven to a great degree by individual initiative rather than formal planning. The story of the Army in Jamaica is an example of that kind of faithful initiative and personal commitment to evangelism which shaped the early Army. That kind of initiative is sadly missing in the Army world today. The story of Mother Agnes Foster is one we could all learn from.

Not much is known about Mother Agnes, I have drawn together information from several sources including blogs, articles in publications, and census data including records of slave owners. I am indebted to the work of William Booth College librarian Winette Field for her blog post which first introduced me to Mother Agnes. You can read her article here:

https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/about-us/international-heritage-centre/international-heritage-centre-blog/guest-blog-black-history

One of the two founders of The Salvation Army in Jamaica was Agnes Foster, known as ‘Mother Agnes.’

Agnes had been born somewhere between 1823 and 1827 into slavery and was taken to England where she lived for forty years. She soldiered at Eccles corps before becoming an officer at South Shields III corps in 1883. She later resigned from officership but maintained her membership in the Army.

She went on to found a mission in Jamaica which was later incorporated into The Salvation Army in 1887. She returned to England and her family where she was promoted to glory.

Early Life

The Legacies of British Slave-ownership site of University College London notes that Alexander Bizzett, a ‘planter’ of Jamaica in October 1835 had been paid £1,442 17s 0d compensation for 72 slaves freed in 1834 (claim T71/864). When the British Empire ended slavery across the Empire, it paid compensation to slave owners based on the supposed value of their ‘property.’ Alexander Bizzett’s Chesterfield plantation in Surrey, Jamaica was over 250 acres. An idea of family wealth is that the will (dated January 1840) leaves £300 to his youngest daughter Elizabeth.

Alexander Bizzertt’s will (at the National Archives, Kew, ref PROB 11/1948) mentions three sisters in Scotland, and four children. One of those four children was Agnes.

It is likely that Agnes was illegitimate. After slavery was ended in the Empire, she would have been released from slavery and possibly accepted as a member of the family. Enough at least to be given an inheritance.

Whilst there is no record of Agnes Bizzett in the slave rolls, that does not mean that she was not a slave. Contemporary publications from Jamaica and England say that she was born in slavery. The evidence seems to suggest that she was born into slavery but set free before travelling to Britain, where she would have had to have been freed anyway.

Agnes travelled to Britain perhaps went to England when she inherited funds. There is some suggestion that she travelled with her mistress but I find this unlikely given the date at which slavery was ended around the Empire and the date of the will from her father.

Agnes Comes to England

Agnes is first recorded on the 1851 census but the records show that she had a husband and a two year old daughter. We can assume that she moved to Britain before 1849. There are some documents which suggest she married in London in 1848 so she may well have come to Britain in the early 1840s. After getting married she lived on a farm in Yorkshire with her husband, the much older John Foster, with whom she had four children

We are relying upon census date for much of the hard evidence of her early life. However, the enumerators of the census in Britain cannot be relied on since their information often came from family and neighbours.

The 1851 census records Agnes as living in Aldbrough (Yorkshire) aged 30. Her name is given as “Agness”. She was with her farmer husband John Foster and their two-year-old daughter Mary who had been born in Hull.

The 1861 census gives us more details of her life. The census shows that Agnes was residing at Cliff Top, the Spa, Aldbrough in Yorkshire. The same place as before, but now we have more information about the location. We also know more about John Foster, her husband. He was a ‘hayman’ farming 113 acres and employing three labourers. He was reasonably well today and it is likely that Agnes’s inheritance helped her to secure the match.

By this time John Foster was aged 57. It turns out that he had been born south of the River Humber in Lincolnshire). This is the first confirmation that she had been born in Jamaica around 1823 and, by this point, was aged 38. Three children were listed: Agnes (aged 10), William (aged 8) and Jane L. (aged 6) all born in Aldbrough. There were three servants in the household in addition to the three labourers. This establishes Agnes as reasonably middle-class.

In the 1871 census, John Foster was 72, and still farming 113 acres. His birthplace was stated to have been in Adlingfleet. Knowing the place of his birth meant that more details about his life could be discovered. The baptism records of Adlingfleet suggest he was the son of Joseph and Sarah Foster and had been baptised in 1798.

Agnes his wife was recorded as born in Jamaica and aged 46. Given the reliance on second-hand information, the uncertainty around when Agnes was born, and the general level of confusion in some census date, it’s not unusual for the ages of one person to change across the census data.

Agnes’s Husband and Children

There were four children in the Foster household. Their daughter Mary, here aged 21, had been absent in 1861. She had been born in Hull. This means that the family had the means to travel and stay away. John Foster may have had family in the area, but it is equally likely that they had taken time away as a family.

Their other three children had survived, become nine years older, and gained middle initials: Sarah A, William B. and Jane L. B. were all recorded as being born locally. Jane was still at school. Sarah A – listed as Agnes in 1861 – was Sarah Agnes Foster. Her birth registration on the 23rd of June 1851 has both names. Jane Letitia Bizzett Foster’s birth was registered in the last quarter of 1855. There were still three servants in the household.

When Agnes registered the birth of Sarah Agnes in 1851 she stated that she had been ‘formerly Bizett.’ By using this name, the marriage documents for John Foster was traced to the parish of St. Botolph in Aldgate, on the 16th of December 1848. John Foster was a farmer whose father, Joseph Foster, was also a farmer. Agnes Bizzett was listed as daughter of Alexander Bizzett. They were both previously unmarried and of appropriate age.

The 1881 census records show Agnes Foster now as a widow. However, this is complicated there is a mention of Jim Foster in the Middlesbrough Daily Gazette in 1882. It could be a different John Foster, but it is also likely that the date of death on the census is wrong. The death certificate for John Foster is 1884. So either the census is wrong, or both the death certificate and the Middlesbrough Daily Gazette are wrong. I’d suggest that the census is wrong.

She was listed as living at 8 Vernon Avenue in Barton, in Eccles (Manchester). It was here that she soldiered at Eccles corps. She was aged 56. With her was Jane, now 25 and listed as a ‘teacher of music.’ They also now had a female lodger to help with the income. Other residents in the street had solid respectable jobs. It is presumed that by this time her other children had married.

Was Her Husband Also A Salvationist?

John Foster’s death was recorded in the Aldbrough district aged 78. It seems that John Foster was also involved in the work of The Salvation Army.

The Middlesbrough Daily Gazette reported on the Salvation Army on multiple occasions.

On the 29th of January 1880 they reported an assault on member John Foster.

On the 7th of March 1881 the presence of  ‘Mr and Mrs Foster’ at an Army gathering in Loftus.

An unclear mention on the 25th of May 1881 was followed on the 21 March 1882 with a mention that Jim Foster had delivered an address in Loftus at a meeting noting the second anniversary of the corps in Loftus.

Agnes and John Foster gave their only son, in born 1853, the names William Bizzett. He married in Hull in early 1877 to Annie Elizabeth Crawford. He died near Eccles in the spring of 1908,  pre-deceasing his mother by two years.

Their music teacher daughter Jane married John Harvey. At the 1891 census they were living at 25 Murray Road in Bedminster (Bristol) with their six-months-old daughter Agnes M. Harvey. It is assumed that their daughter was surely named for her grandmother. Jane L. B. Harvey died in Bedminster in 1893, aged 37.

Salvationist Period

The Salvation Army’s records in the heritage centre show that Agnes was an Army officer by 1883, serving at South Shields no. 3 Corps. The date of her commission is not certain.

She resigned on 4 May 1883 and returned to soldiering at Eccles. I would suggest that she resigned possibly because of the declining health of her husband who by that time was 77 or 78.

Agnes Foster seems to have returned to Kingston, Jamaica, in 1885, after the death of her husband. 

Agnes Foster the Pioneer

The work of The Salvation Army in Jamaica was begun unofficially on the initiative of Agnes Foster and W. Raglan Phillips. Phillips was an Englishman who lived in Jamaica, working as a surveyor, printer, and the publisher of the Westmoreland Telegraph. They both joined the Army at different times and both independently started their own missions in 1887.

Agnes worked in Kingston and Phillips in Bluefields, Westmoreland. During this time Agnes became known as Mother Foster. ‘Mother’ was a common honourific for female single officers in charge of a home or mission station in the early Army.

In 1888 IHQ ordered the establishment of official Salvation Army work in Jamaica.

This methodology was common in the early Army. Salvationists travelled to a new place where there was no Army and so took it upon themselves to start one. This happened in the USA, and in Australia, as well as in many parts of the UK. Ordinary Salvationists were confident in their ability to evangelise and start up mission stations or outposts because of Sanctification.

The Army taught that the only qualifier for ministry was Sanctification. The blessing of holiness was more important than any degree from Oxford or ordination from Canterbury. If the Holy Spirit was at work in a person’s life then that was the end of it – they were ordained and empowered directly by God.

When the Kingston (Jamaica) work of the Ayrmy was officially opened at the beginning of 1888 the first issue of Kingston’s War Cry said one of Agnes’s daughters was an officer of the Salvation Army in England. That daughter has not been identified in the Army’s archives.

The War Cry in 1888 describes the reception of the reinforcements from London and mentions some key figures from the Jamaican pioneers, including Mother Agnes and ‘Blind Mark.’ Mark was a Salvationist who could read Braille and had introduced Braille classes in Jamaica. He was influential in the establishment of the Army’s home for blind children.

Return to England and Promotion to Glory

Agnes Foster returned to Britain from Jamaica and is listed at 219 Gate Street in Swinton, Eccles, in the 1891 census. A widow born in Jamaica, aged 67, her occupation was ‘evangelist’. She had maintained her links with the Army and continued in her evangelism. She lived as a visitor, or lodger, in the house of Jacob Lamb, an ironmonger. In the British census of 1901 Agnes Foster, a Jamaica-born widow aged 74 was living in two rooms at 56 North Hill in Bedminster (in the St Paul’s neighbourhood of Bristol).

The Jamaica Gleaner of 25 October 1902 noted she was living in Eccles with a daughter, and said the same on 12 May 1910 when reporting her death on 18 March 1910 aged 90. The registration of death was made the next day by her daughter in law ‘A E Foster’ who lived at 16 Gleaves Road in Eccles. The death from old age took place at 35 St James Street, Eccles. Probate was granted in April 1910 and the estate worth £129 went to her widowed daughter-in-law, Annie Elizabeth Foster.

Agnes Foster’s Impact for The Salvation Army Today

Mother Agnes is a key part of Army history and holds up a mirror to today’s soldiery.

She was one of the first black officers in Britain, and had been born into slavery. As such, she provides an insight into how the early Army functioned socially. They made a freed black woman into an officer at a time when she more than likely experienced prejudice from the people around her. She is also a link to the internationalism which was part of the Army from the beginning – an internationalism owed to Britain’s imperial system.

She launched the Army’s mission in Jamaica when she was already late in life, with four adult children and having lost her husband. She went from being active in her home corps to being instrumental in the beginnings of the Army in her home country. Without her ability to identify with the people and culture of Jamaica who the Army was reaching out to, it is unlikely that the Army would have been able to officially begin in 1888.

She is a reminder that ministry is not about a title. She gave up her officership, probably to care for her dying husband. But giving up the position did not mean giving up the ministry. Her life is evidence of what God can do through anyone if they are open to saying Yes to God.

She is also a challenge for Salvationsits today. How many of us, whether soldiers of members of officers, are willing to go and start something on our own, with our own initiative, for the sake of the Kingdom and on behalf of the Army, without any funding or resources? People have a tendency to complain about the decreasing numbers of officers – but I wonder how many people making those complaints are willing to take up a life of active ministry in their community?

Perhaps we need to rediscover the vocational aspect of soldiership. Imagin if soldiers started projects on their own initiative, began evangelism because they believe they should do so, or undertook to visit and care for their neighbours in the name of Jesus? What kind of force for the Kingdom would the Army be if every soldier was mobilised for mission rather than relying on officers, volunteers, and employees, to do it for them?

Maybe we all need to be a bit more like Mother Agnes.

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