Happy Juneteenth! We (the CCASM crew and I) celebrated the day excavating at James Swann’s house. I don’t have anything to report from today’s work, except that it was really hot. So until I have more results to report, I plan to share some stories about other Charles Countians and their homes, farms, churches, and cemeteries.
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Some of the crew working on a unit in the yard of the Swann House on Juneteenth 2023. |
Today’s post is about the
lost cemetery and church site that I first visited in early September 2021. The
property is along Old Stage Coach Road near the African American Heritage House
and a plat of it included the location of a single marked grave. In my
experience, single graves are unusual. There may be only one grave with visible
markings on the surface, but in reality it is surrounded by several other
unmarked graves. In this case, the single marked grave was surrounded by
multiple grave depressions, some of which were marked by handmade markers. I
didn’t count all the graves that were visible that day, instead I made an
estimate of 60 to 70 graves, which were spread across the property in about 10
neatly ordered rows. When I returned to the office I placed the cemetery on the
county’s GIS cemetery map layer. I also
registered it as a Maryland archaeological site. Part of filling out the form
for the latter led to the discovery of information about the Mount Zion Colored
Methodist Episcopal Church, which was formed by newly freed men and women in
the 1870s.
The Methodist Episcopal Church
In April 1866, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church South met in New Orleans. This branch of the Methodist church had separated from the northern branch 20 years earlier over the question of slavery. Now in 1866, with the war over and the end of enslavement, the southern church met to decide what to do about the newly freed men and women who were communicants of the church. One source I consulted put the number of enslaved communicants in the south at 207,000 on the eve of the Civil War. After the war, only 78,000 individuals remained, as many had joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church or the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.[1] Rather than welcome the individuals that they had formerly enslaved into the fold, the Conference ordered the formation of a separate church once annual conferences of African American parishioners had been established. In December 1870, eight annual conferences, all of them in former Confederate states, participated in the first General Conference of the Colored M.E. Church. Churches in Maryland were organized into an annual conference in 1875.
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Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser 18 February 1881, page 3 |
A Colored M.E. congregation was probably organized in Port Tobacco after the 1866 General Conference in New Orleans. On 28 May 1874, this congregation purchased a one-acre lot along the Port Tobacco causeway on the north edge of town in a marshy area known as “The Meadows.” The church trustees named in the deed were Thomas Hawkins, Washington Willis, and Dennis and Andrew Bond. They paid $50 for the land and the deed stipulated that the “...lot and premises shall be used kept maintained and disposed of as a place of divine worship for the use of the ministry and colored membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church...”[2] The building associated with the church was probably damaged or destroyed by a flood in mid-February 1881. The Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser reported on February 18th that due to the snow thaw in the early part of the month, Port Tobacco Run overflowed forming a lake of water on either side of the canal stretching from the school house to agricultural fields on the west side of the canal. The depth of the water measured between three to four feet. In addition, the stream “...forced its way over the causeway, washing some very dangerous places in the latter.” The church, which stood along the causeway near the school house was in the path of the flood. The newspaper does not report the amount of damage done to the church, but the congregation decided to relocate to the uplands above the village on Mount Hill.
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Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser, 9 July 1886, page 3 |
The second church site was on a one-acre lot along what is now Old Stage Coach Road. The land was purchased as two parcels. The first parcel, a half acre lot, was purchased on 1 August 1882 by the Church Trustees: Washington Willis, Morgan Thompson, Henry Coats, William Vincent, and Alfred Dent from William and Mary F. Boswell, the owners of a large plantation known as “Chandler’s Hope”. The Trustees paid $50 for the lot. The second parcel of half an acre was purchased 14 January 1890, from Henry Heber Boswell for $50.[3] This parcel was also part of “Chandlers Hope” and was inherited by Boswell from his father William Boswell. The Trustees in 1890 were Washington Willis, Richard Washington, Henry Coats, John Willis, and Alfred Dent. In order to raise money to build a new church and pay for the land, the trustees sold the causeway lot in 1887 to Wesley Bowie for $25 and held fund raisers through the 1890s that were public events open to whites and African Americans alike. The cornerstone for the new church was laid on 5 July 1886 and a dedication service took place on 24 May 1891[4]
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Maryland Independent 29 May 1891, page 3 |
The cemetery was in use in November 1892 when Washington Willis died. His obituary, in the Maryland Independent notes that he was a leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church and that he was buried in the new graveyard of the church on Mount Hill. The following year, Jane Hawkins, a member of the church, was buried “in the beautiful shade of Mt. Zion Cemetery.”[5] These are the only two people who I know with any certainty are buried in the unmarked graves of the cemetery.
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Maryland Independent 7 September 1894, page 2 |
The last mention of the church in the local newspapers is on September the 7th 1894 when the Maryland Independent advertised a concert and festival for the benefit of the church on the 12th. I’m unsure as to how long the congregation survived after 1894. The church is mentioned as bordering property described in a 1926 deed of partition when Elmer L. and Cora A. Sutton transferred the North or Upper Farm of “Chandlers Hope” to their daughter Elva S. Bohannon and her husband Judson.
The church is shown on the 1923 and 1925 United States Geological
Survey (USGS) maps of this section of Charles County and it can also be seen on
the 1937 aerial photograph of the area. However, after 1937 the church
disappears from maps.
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1925 Indian Head USGS map |
The cemetery continues to be mentioned after 1937 in a deed and a survey of the property. The first is a 1952 deed from Cora A. Sutton, widow to her daughter Elva S. Bohannon DeMott for part of the Lower Farm of “Chandlers Hope”.[7] This deed included two lots, the first contained the cemetery and the second was for a lot along Chapel Point Road. There is no reference as to how Cora Sutton came into possession of the cemetery or the church land. However, the deeds of sale to the Trustees in 1882 and 1890 state that the the property is held in trust to be used, kept, maintained and disposed of as a place of divine worship for the use of the ministry and colored membership of the Methodist Espicopal Church. It is possible that the property reverted to the owners of “Chandlers Hope” when the congregation ceased to use the church. The last time that the cemetery appears in legal documents is the March 1998 survey of George McPhee’s property by Herbert Crowder.[8] McPhee, who was Elva’s son in law, was a trustee of the Elva Sutton Bohannon DeMott Testamentary Trust (Elva died in 1971). This plat shows the location of the single marked grave on the property.
The last
burial in the cemetery occurred in 1968 and was that of Robert Hayes Wheeler
Chambers, an employee of the Sutton family. This is also the only burial in the
cemetery with an inscribed commercially produced stone. The few other graves
that have markers are inscribed with an initial or have no inscription at all.
Chambers was an African American who was born in North Carolina in 1867 and
probably started working for the Suttons around 1920 when they lived in
Ashville, North Carolina. He moved north with them when they
purchased “Chandlers Hope” in the early 1920s and appears as a
resident of Elmer Sutton’s household in Charles County on the 1930 and 1940
census.
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Stone for Robert Chambers and examples of other types of markers in the cemetery |
At this
point I know that there were at least six Colored Methodist Episcopal
congregations formed in Charles County after the Civil War: Jordan’s Chapel
(now Alexandria Chapel) in Chicamuxen, Metropolitan Church in Pomonkey, Shiloh
in Newburg, Smith Chapel in Pisgah, Brice Chapel and Mount Zion. The first four
are still in existence and are now United Methodist churches. Brice Chapel on
Piney Church Road and Mount Zion are no longer extant. All of these churches
had their own cemeteries, the four UM churches still use theirs. Two other
Colored Methodist Episcopal congregations – one in White Plains and another in
Benedict – are mentioned in contemporary newspapers. I have reached out to the
current United Methodist Baltimore-Washington Conference for information about
their historic black churches in the area. Unfortunately they have no
information about Mount Zion. They suggested to me that the church ceased to
exist when the different branches of Methodism came together in 1968 as the
United Methodist Church. However, it seems clear from the deed research that the
church was no longer in use by 1952. Because of the segregated nature of
Protestant Churches in the county through much of the twentieth century, it is
unlikely that the congregants of Mount Zion joined in worship with any of the
local white Methodist churches before 1968. Another possibility is that Mount
Zion became part of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church, which was
founded in 1870 by recently freed men and women. Or, it was absorbed by another
local segregated Methodist Church.
If anyone
in the community has information about relatives who attended the church or who
were buried in the grave yard please let me know. I am continuing to do
research into the church and the cemetery and would like to honor the memory of
those buried in the Mount Zion graveyard.
[1] Phillips, Charles Henry. 1925 The History of the
Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America: Comprising Its Organization,
Subsequent Development and Present Status. Publishing House C.M.E. Church.
Electronic Edition. https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/phillips/phillips.html
[2] Charles County Land Records [CCLR] Liber GAH no. 4, folio 254.
[3] CCLR Liber BGS no. 5, folio 663; Liber JST no. 3, folio 151.
[4] Maryland Independent, 2 July 1886, page 3; 8 May 1891, page 33; 31 August
1894, page 2.
[5] Maryland
Independent, 4 November 1892, page 3, 18
August 1893, page 7.
[6] CCLR Liber WMA no. 45, folio 11).
[7] CCLR Liber no. 105, folio 123.
[8] Plat Book 50, page 88.
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