Racial tensions between African-American and white Methodist church members in Rockville peaked immediately before the Civil War. Pro-slavery parishioners joined the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1863. White parishioners of the Rockville Methodist Episcopal Church entered the front door to sit in the sanctuary, while African-Americans used a separate entrance and sat upstairs in the gallery, and some African-American worshipers listened outside from the windows. By 1868, African-Americans owned this property and renamed their church Jerusalem. The church was substantially rebuilt in 1892 and for several years housed Rockville's African-American students after the elementary school burned. It was the site of graduation ceremonies for African-American schools through the 1950s and also where the Montgomery County branch of the NAACP was organized in 1937. The parsonage was built in 1912 from trees harvested by the congregation at a church-owned lot in Poolesville. It continued as a parsonage until 1986, when the church purchased a new parsonage. It then became Cordelia House, a woman's resource center. In 1999, Cordelia House was damaged by fire caused by arson. It was extensively restored in 2005 and is in use today. These two buildings are among the few remaining historic church and parsonage units left in Montgomery County, and the traditional vernacular style of the parsonage is one of the few remaining examples of this house type in Rockville's Town Center.
