The Bath African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church stood on this site as part of a denomination chartered in New York City in 1801 after discrimination against African American Christians in the 1790s led them to form their own churches. Built sometime between 1895 and 1900, it was a twenty feet by thirty-three feet timber-framed structure resting on brick piers. Little is known about the church or its congregation, but its membership appears to have dwindled until the last services in the mid-1940s. The building later fell into disrepair and disappeared from the landscape shortly after 1955. Its cast iron bell, the only remaining artifact, once called members to worship and now stands again on the former church lot. Parishioners are buried in a nearby cemetery, where a marker dedicated in 1996 bears the names of those interred. Religious institutions such as this church played a major role in African American social and political development, and the Bath church helps convey that story.