African-American church surrounded by history
work. helped The them one get thing through that tough times was their faith.
They had no church of their own and attended services at St. John’s, a white Methodist church in Fawn Grove. They were not permitted to sit in the pews and were segregated to the balcony seats in the rafters. When communion was given, they were permitted to participate, but if the preacher ran out of hosts, they were out of luck.
They held services independently, where they gathered in their log cabins on the farms where they toiled. Among those was the farm owned by a man named James Wiley. Mr. Wiley didn’t think his church was treating its African-American parishioners in a very Christian manner. But back then, there wasn’t a lot he could do about it within the church. Churches weren’t ready to integrate, and attitudes about race hadn’t even begun to evolve.
The families that gathered to worship talked about starting They were their interested own church. in establishing a congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, first established in 1794 in New York. The church had a history of fighting for social justice, counting among its members Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. The church became known as the Freedom Church for its gestation of the abolition movement. It is often thought of as the precursor to the NAACP. “All week long, you could be a slave, but on Sunday morning, you were free,” Rev. Carter said. three The men group as appointed trustees: Edward Harris, Abraham Barton and George Boyd. They met with Mr. Wiley and told him about their desire to establish their own church. he men Mr. felt and Wiley obliged and women was as a to Christian, he fairly help considered progressive, the neighbors and brothers and sisters in Christ worship as they saw fit. He gave a group of them a parcel of land, deeding it to them on Sept. 4, 1849, for the cost of recording the transaction. Mr. Wiley worked alongside his African-American neighbors, clearing the land and cutting the timber into boards to build the church. The small structure was completed in 1850, and the church joined the AME denomination. preacher The assigned church to it had from a Baltimore, and on Sundays, parishioners would travel by horse and buggy to pick him up in Muddy Creek Forks. When the Civil War broke out, according to church member Steve Doweary, who has compiled a history of the church, many of the young men in the congregation enlisted in the Union Army.
One of them, John Wilson, was among the African-American militiamen who burned down the Wrightsville-Columbia bridge to prevent the Confederates from crossing the Susquehanna. Eighteen Civil War veterans are buried in the church cemetery.
The church grew over the decades. By the 1940s, the old church was showing some wear and the congregation had outgrown it.
The church asked the AME Zion denomination for money to build a new church, but were denied. The congregation took on the job of building the church themselves. They were a talented group, having worked in farming and some having their own construction businesses.
The new church was completed in 1954.
The church was the community’s heart. During the summers, families gathered for special daylong celebrations called camp meetings. They would gather for services and have a picnic. The men and boys would play baseball or softball or horseshoes in the field next to the church.
They would have pheasant or groundhog hunts. They always ended the day with a memorial service in the cemetery, in the words of Mr. Doweary, “to show appreciation to their loved ones who had passed to the great beyond.”
This history was almost lost when the church closed down in 2013 after a pipe burst and flooded the basement.
The congregation stayed together and worshipped at Small Memorial AME Zion in York. And they set about rebuilding the church.
The water damage was extensive, and black mold had spread from the basement into the walls of the sanctuary. It was a mess, Mr. Doweary said. And it was a big job. The congregation did most of the work itself, calling in contractors to do plumbing and other tasks.
A year ago, Rev. Carter was assigned to the church. Rev. Carter, a Navy veteran who survived the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, rallied the congregation around the motto, “Let’s build something together.”
The church was rededicated in October. More than 200 people packed into the sanctuary for the service. “It was standing room only,” Rev. Carter said.
Many of the families who trace their roots to the founding of the church still attend services there, even though many no longer live in southern York County and have to drive half an hour or more to get to church.