The First United Negro Baptist Church fire and manuscript discovery began with a June 1966 blaze in Wilmington, Delaware, and ended with the unexpected recovery of Henry Shackleford’s account from a concealed fireproof box. The discovery connected a local church fire to a larger history of slavery and abolition, while the congregation’s plan to authenticate and publish the account made its transition from hidden testimony to public document part of the event itself.

The Fire and Its Discovery

On June 14, 1966, the church at Fourth and Bainbridge Streets, described as the city’s oldest Black church, was destroyed by fire. Officials attributed the blaze to a faulty gas heater, and no one was injured. Among the scorched remains were notebooks belonging to the late church deacon Charles D. Higgins, prompting academic interest beyond Wilmington.

The account had been kept in a metal fireproof box beneath the floorboards of Higgins’s chair behind the pulpit. He had occupied that place faithfully every Sunday for more than forty-three years. The box also held twelve Confederate dollars, a rare ivory-billed woodpecker feather, and a note from Higgins’s late wife. These objects made the discovery more than the recovery of a manuscript: they preserved a small, enigmatic archive alongside it.

The Account and Its Historical Reach

The recovered narrative was attributed to Henry Shackleford and characterized in the contemporary report as a wild slave narrative illuminating a little-known period of American history. Its first-person account gives its narrator a position as witness to John Brown’s antislavery campaign, but the narrative also foregrounds the instability of testimony: Henry distinguishes direct knowledge from what he has heard and notes how accounts of Brown’s final meeting with Frederick Douglass circulated in multiple versions.

The story’s political world appears through concrete problems of communication and participation. Henry proposes teaching someone to read for money, while a message about Black people in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., eager to fight slavery describes their lack of telegraphs and access to letters. Public speeches likewise do not guarantee commitment: after listeners voice support for armed resistance, no one steps forward to volunteer. The recovered account therefore presents abolitionist history not only through celebrated figures and declarations, but through the practical limits on literacy, communication, and collective action.

From Hidden Record to Public Document

The congregation announced that it would submit Henry’s account to an expert in Black history for verification and later sell the notebooks for publication, with the proceeds intended to buy a new church van. The plan placed authentication before publication while making the manuscript’s eventual circulation serve a local purpose. Its status remained provisional: the fire had revealed the document, but the announced scholarly review had yet to establish its authenticity.

The contrast between the hidden box and the proposed publication gives the discovery its narrative force. A record concealed beneath a pulpit for decades enters public discussion because of a destructive accident, and its contents challenge readers to reconsider who can preserve and recount history. The discovery thus turns a church’s loss into the beginning of an inquiry into testimony, memory, and the reach of an overlooked life.