Intersection of Jefferson and North Rankin streets

Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1858 as the Second Presbyterian Church, a mission of First Presbyterian Church, and Zion Chapel acquired the building in 1866 when Hiram R. Revels served as pastor. Revels, born free in North Carolina in 1827, had worked as a barber before studying for the ministry in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio; during the Civil War he recruited black Union regiments in Maryland and Missouri, and after arriving at Zion Chapel he was elected to the City Council and then to the Mississippi State Senate. His election in 1870 to the United States Senate marked the first time an African American served in either house of the U.S. Congress, and after serving from 1870 to 1871 he became the first President of Alcorn Agricultural & Mechanical College, now Alcorn State University. Nearby, Richard King built King's Tavern about 1797 and received his first tavern license in 1799; boatmen returning north on foot by the Natchez Trace after floating down the Mississippi River to sell their flatboats of enslaved persons and produce in New Orleans often stopped there, and Pony Express riders also used the building as a mail station. In 1848, the parish at St. Mary Cathedral founded the St. Mary's Orphan Asylum for girls, and in 1860 the church also started D'Evereux Hall, an orphanage for boys on the outskirts of downtown; both orphanages closed in 1966 and their buildings were demolished, and the girls' orphanage property was sold to Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church for use as a parking lot. Also at this intersection stood the G. L. C. Davis House, whose owner, superintendent of the National Telegraph line, sold it in 1858 when he resigned and moved to New Orleans; the sale advertisement called it "the eligibly situated and new built brick house [with] a fine garden and orchard of fruit trees attached."

Vidalia, Louisiana · United States