St. Paul Church / Oak Grove

St. Paul AME, one of the first black churches after the Civil War, began as Oak Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church. Local tradition holds that its original small congregation worshipped in the 1850s in the "Bush Arbor" and later built a church in the 1880s on present Kennerly Rd. In the 1930s the church was moved to its present site. By 1870 a substantial black settlement had developed in this area of Dutch Fork Township known as Oak Grove. Families prominent in its history included those of Octavius Bookman, Miles Bowman, Henry Corley, Moses Geiger, and John Richardson, and a number of their descendants still live in the area.

Columbia, South Carolina · United States