The First Baptist Church was established in Apalachicola in 1848 under the leadership of a White minister. By December 1855, Rev. E. H. Warren had become pastor, and records portray his tenure as tumultuous. Warren wrote that about 50 Black congregants and half as many Whites belonged to the church, and that they did not worship in the building at the same time. Free Black men Homer Bryant and Bernard Lopez played important roles in the church’s early years. According to Warren, Black members grew dissatisfied with him, and Mrs. Lopez said they refused him because he was a slaveholder and favored slavery. Warren wrote that Homer Bryant called a church conference, where Bernard Lopez was ordained and became the church’s first Black pastor, after which Warren wrote that he had quit the field. An 1856 letter from W. M. Davis, pastor of the Greenwood, Florida, Baptist church, said it was generally conceded that the Black church was the largest, most intelligent, and wealthiest part of the Baptist interest in Apalachicola and ought to have received as much or more attention than Whites. Historical records of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church trace its ministry to a Little Red Church at Block 30, Lot 7 in Apalachicola. A second building was erected there in 1889, facing 8th Street, and in 1917, under Rev. A. F. Martin, George H. Marshall completed the present masonry church. Built of cast concrete block with a rusticated surface, it features stepped parapet gable walls facing Avenue E and 8th Street and a crenelated bell tower at the western intersection of the T-shaped structure; the bell was donated by Mrs. Ruge, wife of a local seafood cannery businessman. In its early years, the congregation was known by both First Baptist Church and Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and its later pastors included Rev. Spencer Baker, Rev. Carter, Rev. A. Frederick Martin, Rev. Monroe, Rev. C.H. Hawkins, Rev. Rivers, Rev. Duck, Rev. William Ming, Rev. Cox, Rev. T.J. Smith, Rev. Ernest Raines, Rev. Sylvester R. Bright, Rev. Thomas Banks, Rev. Deborders, Rev. Sermon, Rev. Raymond A. Rodger’s, Rev. Leon Jones, Rev. Carl E. Bailey, Rev. James Brown, Rev. James E. Brooks, and Rev. Barry L. Hand.