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An Archaeological Project Attempts to Find

Clues About the Beginnings of One of America’s

Oldest Black Churches, but

WHERE IS

THE STORY?

By The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation staff Let Freedom Ring Foundation

onnie Matthews Harshaw was driving on Nassau Street when Just as that early congregation was first hidden from view, so was the
she passed a grassy field in which a gray marker had been placed. church’s history. When the church moved to its 20th-century home,
CThe words “Site of FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH” indicated the antebellum-era brick structure built on Cole’s property was torn
where the church’s first permanent location had been. down, and the site was paved.
There is no building to visit. No other information was given at the As Harshaw looked at the empty site and the grassy field, she
site. The 1856 brick church that once housed the Williamsburg wondered: Where is the story that goes with the marker?
congregation had been purchased and torn down in the 1950s during
the process of restoring the colonial capital. The First Baptist Church
then moved to a new home several blocks from its original site.

View of excavations showing the brick foundations for the 1856 church
and the much smaller brick foundations for the first church building
dating to the first quarter of the 19th century. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Docent marking the first permanent location of Williamsburg’s historic First Baptist
Church on South Nassau Street, spring 2020. A partnership led by First Baptist
Church and Colonial Williamsburg has resumed archaeological investigation of the
site, which last took place in 1957. Let Freedom Ring Foundation

Back Up to the Beginning
But the First Baptist Church’s story doesn’t begin in the 19th century.
It begins in the 18th century, in a brush arbor. At that time, a brush
arbor was a rough, open-sided shelter constructed of vertical poles
driven into the ground with additional long poles laid across the top as
support for a roof of brush, cut branches, or hay. Appearing in the
Brick foundation of the first church building and associated brick paving. An
1700s and early 1800s, brush arbors were used by some churches to interior brick foundation wall for the 1856 church can be seen on the far left.
protect worshipers from the weather during lengthy revival meetings.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Free and enslaved Black congregants were hidden from view because
they were forbidden to gather in groups. A Mission is Configured
The bulk of the Church’s history, though, emerged on Nassau “I see a sign there that says this was the site of the oldest church
Street where the group eventually moved after a white landowner, Jesse created by and for African Americans – and that’s all. There was no
Cole, offered them land in town on which to worship. According to story,” said Harshaw, a member of the First Baptist Church and
oral history, Cole heard the music of the congregation and was moved president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, which is dedicated to
to offer them sanctuary. preserving and telling the church’s story.

32 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles