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The founding of Greater St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1867 was spearheaded by Reverend Charles Daggs, a man who had endured the profound hardships and suffering associated with slavery in the District of Columbia before being forcibly transported to Louisiana at the age of 21, as an enslaved individual on Oct 1, 1835 aboard the slave ship Tribune, where he was accompanied by his mother, Rachel Dagg, and his siblings, Eliza, Joseph, and William Henry Daggs. The shippers were John Armfield, Brandon McKenna, and Wright. Rev. Charles Daggs was born circa 1814.
Reverend Daggs later married Eliza Thompson Daggs, and together they raised a family that included their children James, William, Rachel, Lucinda, Joseph, Isaac, Emanuel, Sophia, George, and Louis Daggs. Notably, their daughter Lucinda would eventually migrate to Chicago, where her son, Jimmie Noone, pursued a career as a professional jazz musician, further illustrating the family’s enduring legacy and connection to broader cultural and historical movements.
Source citation for New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., Slave Manifests, 1807-1860
Tasker was born in 1834 in Maryland as a slave. He was later sold to work for widow McCarroll in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. As a slave, Tasker was hired out to work for William Akers, a timber man with more than 1,000 acres who founded the city of Ponchatoula in 1820. After being freed in 1863, Arthur Tasker began preaching the Gospel to the newly freed people in Tangipahoa, as part of the growing African Methodist Episcopal churches being established across the United States. AME churches emerged from the Free African Society and were founded so that Black people could worship God without experiencing racism. Leaders like Tasker believed in the power of education and wanted their descendants to be educated. While Black voters were being massacred for political engagement in the state, Tasker became mayor of Ponchatoula September 13, 1873, succeeding Eldred J. White Sr. Tasker was 39.
