First African Baptist Church was organized in 1862 in the town of Mitchelville, a freedman’s village established on Hilton Head by the United States Army. Its first pastor, Rev. Abraham Murchinson, was a former slave, and the congregation numbered about 120 members when it was organized in August 1862. After the Civil War, the church moved to the Chaplin community and was renamed Goodwill Baptist Church. By 1898 it had moved to this site and was renamed Cross Roads Baptist Church before retaking its original name; it is the mother church of five Beaufort County churches. The present building was built in 1966.