African American Baptist Meetinghouse Exhibit

Transported Africans and their descendants in Virginia developed a religious heritage that led to an African American Baptist congregation in Williamsburg in the late eighteenth century. Drawn to the message of equality before God during the Great Awakening, African Americans Moses and Gowan Pamphlet preached to slaves and free blacks in secret outside of town in the 1770s and 1780s. After 1800 the congregation met in plain sight in this part of Williamsburg, first in a carriage house, then in a brick church built in 1855. This reconstruction of the Taliaferro Cole stable stands near the site of First Baptist Church, which was used until the congregation moved to a new church on Scotland Street in 1956.

Williamsburg, Virginia · United States