Quakers established a meeting house and community here in the 1790s, and by the late 19th century the predominantly African American enclave became known as Wilsontown after brothers Isaiah, John, and Dennis Wilson acquired 77 acres in 1888. Like other agrarian settlements in Anne Arundel County in the 1800s, the small town at the end of Conway Road grew around a common resource, in this case the Indian Springs Meeting House, built by Quakers in 1792 west of the railroad tracks later laid in the 1860s for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. Known for strong abolitionist beliefs, Quakers welcomed free Blacks to use the meeting house for worship and schooling, and the community may have provided a safe haven along the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, residents organized the Forks African Methodist Episcopal Church, which took ownership of the meeting house in 1872. Access to the railroad brought transportation links to Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis as well as jobs, and census records and oral histories recount African Americans from Wilsontown mending tracks, serving as porters, and working in railroad warehouses. In 1942, land northwest of the railroad was acquired by the U.S. Government to expand Fort Meade during World War II, and in 1991 that property was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Patuxent Research Refuge. Some of the land deeded to the Wilson brothers, including the site of Isaiah's home and the original meeting house and Forks Church, lies within the refuge. St. John AME Zion Church, built in 1942, preserves the lineage of the free Black congregation that worshiped at Indian Springs, organized as Forks AME Zion in 1869, took possession of the meeting house in 1872, built a new sanctuary on its foundation in 1908, and after losing that property to eminent domain in 1942 used compensation funds to purchase six acres for the present church. A small cemetery near the original Indian Springs Meeting House contains members of both congregations and reflects the close relationship between Quakers and freed African Americans.