Cato Perkins was an enslaved African-American man from Charleston, South Carolina, who became a missionary to Sierra Leone.
Cato was enslaved by John Perkins. British Library website, The Lives and Letters of the Black Loyalists - Part 3 Cato Perkins and Nathaniel Snowball Cato Perkins self-emancipated by joining the British during the Siege of Charleston, and he joined General Clinton in New York and worked as a carpenter there. Perkins was evacuated to Birchtown, Nova Scotia, in 1783, and he is listed in the Book of Negroes. Upon arriving in Nova Scotia, he was converted by John Marrant of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, which was a Methodist splinter group. Perkins was ordained into the church University of Virginia website, John Morrant, From Methodism to Freemasonry and later took over the running of it. Equiano’s World website, ‘’Associates’’
Perkins migrated to Sierra Leone, where he led a strike of carpenters against the Sierra Leone Company. The new life in Sierra Leone was not what the group had expected and Perkins petitioned the SLC to improve Freetown;Oxford University Press website, No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution; Chapter 8, Black Loyalist Hunger Prevention in Sierra Leone (2019) In 1793 Perkins travelled with Isaac Anderson to London to make their petition heard. William and Mary College website, Perceptions, Promises, And Power: Anna Maria Falconbridge, The Sierra Leone Company, And The Development Of Freetown, 1791-1802, by Jackson Wood (2022) By 1800, inflated price-fixing was leading to food riots and Perkins negotiated between the rioters and the council.
Perkins established the first Huntingdon's Connexion church, with William Ash and John Ellis Early Religious Influences in Sierra Leone. by F.W. Butt-Thompson, published in the Baptist Quarterly 16.7 (July 1956), pages 313-322. and later on, other Nova Scotian settler preachers established churches in the Liberated African villages.
Perkins died in Sierra Leone in 1805,Countess of Huntingdon Connexion website, The Elect Lady, by Gilbert W. Kirby (1972) although some sources state that he lived until 1820; Black Loyalists Digital Collections website, Cato Perkins his churches are the remnant of Huntingdon's Connexion church worldwide.
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External links Sierra Leone website Two Voyages to Sierra Leone, During the Years 1791-2-3, by Anna Maria Falconbridge