The Trinity African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church holds a significant place in history, with two notable locations embodying the spirit of faith, community, and the pursuit of freedom: one in Wilberforce, Ohio, and another in Smithtown, New York.
Trinity AME Church in Wilberforce, Ohio
The church in Wilberforce, Ohio, has been in existence since July 14, 1863, when it was dedicated by Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne as the “Church of the College” at Wilberforce University. Bishop Payne deeply believed “Christianity and culture” were essentials for one’s life.
For years, worship services, revivals, and Bible readings were held in the main building on the campus of Wilberforce University, which contained a chapel. In 1865, the main building was destroyed by fire. Bishop Payne and others raised money to rebuild a worship building on campus, later replaced by a new building known as Shorter Hall, naming the addition as the “Old College Chapel.”
It was later named Holy Trinity and began serving the religious and spiritual needs of not only Wilberforce students but also the students, faculty, and staff from Central State University as well. As Wilberforce continued to grow and the congregation expanded, a dedicated space for worship and fellowship was needed.
On December 14, 1895, the Holy Trinity Board of Trustees purchased a plot for $5.00 for the building of a church. The church building was never constructed; however, services continued to be held in Shorter Hall and Galloway Hall. In 1953, the Chapel of the Living Savior of Payne Theological Seminary was completed and dedicated. Dean Stokes invited the congregation of Holy Trinity to make her permanent home in the Chapel. The first Pastor was Reverend Edward P. Davis.
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Because there was neither a church building nor parsonage, most pastors only served one or two years. The church began to gain financial stability in the 1940s under the leadership of Reverend Earnest Clark. This was accomplished by expanding services to colleges, the Wilberforce Community, as well as using the Wilberforce University Choir on Sundays and college professors and seminary students to teach Sunday School.
Trinity AME Church in Smithtown, New York
Trinity AME Church in Smithtown, New York is located at New York Avenue at Wildwood Lane. The church was proposed for a National Register Historic District in 2017.
Trinity was the first church to be built in this historic downtown neighborhood of ecclesiastical buildings where congregations worship at the Byzantine Catholic Church of the Resurrection (and Rectory, National Register, 2019), St. Thomas of Canterbury Episcopal Church, and St.
In the 1970s, Trinity’s congregation, including Ms. Bertha Stevens, the daughter of one of the founders, recalled local histories that after the Civil War, the property where the church would be built was a “meeting place for a group of freed Smithtown slaves” and that the 1910 church built by their descendants, was “an old-fashioned building with brown shingles”.
Trinity AME Church in Smithtown, NY
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Trinity’s location speaks to long-forgotten proactive abolitionist efforts in nearby Hauppauge, Smithtown Landing, and Commack inspired by leading American abolitionist preachers on this circuit of Methodist church groups, often meeting in homes before their churches were built.
The Rev. Freeborn Garrettson preached in the Commack area as early as 1786 and at least once at the Hauppauge Methodist Episcopal Church between 1806 and 1816. Years earlier, Garrettson’s famous sermon delivered in Delaware led to the enslaved Richard Allen (1760-1831) arranging with his enslaver (who also heard the sermon) to work toward buying his freedom.
A short journey west of Trinity’s future location, freedman Harry Hosier (c. 1750-1806), known as ‘Black Harry,’ the first Black man to preach to a Methodist congregation (1781), preached “at the invitation of Jacob Brush,” in 1791, to the Commack congregation, originally half of whom were enslaved.
When Trinity AME Church was rebuilt in situ in 1937, history related by the Rev. Leonard M. Davis (pastor from June 1985-May 1991), importantly notes the church was constructed by Black and white members of the community with the bell given by the white community. This “community spirit” was a 131-year-old Smithtown tradition of different faiths building for others, epitomized when Presbyterian Joshua Smith II (1763-1845) of Hauppauge donated the land and physically helped build the Hauppauge United Methodist Church in 1806.
Hauppauge United Methodist Church
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Visiting Methodist preachers were often welcomed at “the Old Judge” Joshua II’s home. During Joshua’s term as a New York State Assemblyman, a letter home in 1796, writing to one of his brothers-in-law, a Smithtown Overseer of the Poor (charged with caring for those who couldn’t provide for themselves), complained of delays and the lack of progress on the State’s abolition bill.
However, “gradual abolition” based on a person’s birth date was not fast enough, so in 1799, the Smiths of Hauppauge developed a program to accelerate manumissions and provide education for formerly enslaved persons while protecting the very young, very old, and the infirm who could not support themselves, thus bringing an end to enslavement as soon as possible.
Converting to Methodism in 1806, Captain was long remembered as “the Praying Black Methodist of Smithtown” because his prayers at services at Commack and at Smithtown Landing, where he lived, could be heard ‘almost a mile away,’ according to ministers’ accounts. Otherwise, Captain’s children, born before July 4, 1799, were enslaved for life until they might be manumitted when they could support themselves.
Two of Captain’s children were placed together in the household of a Commissioner of [Smithtown] Schools, with articles of indentureship until age 21 drawn up for them by Overseers of the Poor, stipulating that young Abraham Captain receive an education. By 1820, there were no enslaved persons in Hauppauge, nearly a decade before July 4, 1827, the date long-awaited for statewide abolition that was legislated in 1817.
Strong abolitionist sentiment in Smithtown led Quakers in Westbury (belonging to the first religious group to support ending slavery) to save the life of future pastor Henry Highland Garnet by sending him to Smithtown. Census, thereby establishing his residency in the “free state” of New York.
Built circa 1752, the Arthur House signified “heaven-born freedom,” a phrase found in Smith family papers. It was formerly the home of Mary Woodhull Arthur, whose father Abraham Woodhull was “Culper, Senior,” President George Washington’s chief spy responsible for intelligence leading to the American victory at Yorktown.
The compass points of Trinity AME Church’s location are highly symbolic. Situated on the northeast corner at the southern end of New York Avenue at Wildwood Lane, the naming of the local road network seemingly embodies Garnet’s story. Coincidentally, this year marks the bicentennial of his family’s first escape to freedom.
After their self-emancipation from enslavement in Maryland in 1824, slave catchers located his family residing in New York City five years later. Although Garnet’s parents managed to evade their pursuers, his sister was captured but freed by the courts when she proved residency in the “free state” of New York.
Given that context, it is appropriate that Trinity Church is backed by Princeton Avenue, one of many neighborhood roads named for colleges and universities. That Henry Highland Garnet valued his time in Smithtown is evident by his choice of words to describe slavery as a crime that “embittered the sweet waters of life.” He’d tasted that life of freedom in Smithtown and Hauppauge, the place name for ‘sweet waters’ in the Algonquin language.
According to Samuel Arden Smith, Garnet would preach for three years in Europe, traveling to England, Scotland, France, and Germany, “speaking to them in their languages”. In 1879, half a century after leaving Smithtown, Pastor Garnet of New York City’s Shiloh Presbyterian Church invited his old tutor Smith to attend a service in his church wherein he delivered a sermon, saying, “There is a gentleman here with us from whom I have received great kindness, and if I have ever been useful to you or the world, it was greatly owing to him; and I desire those of my friends who feel so disposed to come up to this stand and be introduced to him”.
At about the time President James A. Minister and Counsel General (ambassador) to Liberia in 1881, Alfred Griffin moved his family to Smithtown, where he was a member of the fraternal organization of Free and Accepted Masons. He was “highly respected . . . in the community”.
Census, Alfred Griffin‘s wife, Mary Dixon Griffin’s father, was born in the West Indies, perhaps Haiti. Alfred’s story and that of his son George Griffin, who became a carpenter, exemplify the stories of the children of the enslaved who built Trinity AME Church.
Alfred Griffin’s funeral was held at the 1845 Smithtown Branch Methodist Episcopal Church (demolished in 1962), and he was buried in the Cemetery adjacent to the Hauppauge United Methodist Church (National Register, 2020). Thankfully, Methodist church oral history remembered his last name and cemetery trustees asked me to find his identity.
Looking past the changes in Smithtown’s streetscape and reconstructing the sense of place for why Trinity AME Church was built where it stands today tells a story deserving of national recognition. It’s the story of freedom in America. It’s Garnet’s story. It is Alfred Griffin’s story.
Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, Utah
Trinity AME Church Marker in Salt Lake City, Utah
Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church building at 239 E. Church in Central City in Salt Lake City in Salt Lake County, Utah. Utah's first black congregation, started in the 1880s
After years of meeting in homes and rented buildings, and one unsuccessful attempt to build a church, the congregation was able to buy this property in 1907 with money donated by Mary Bright, a cook who had made her fortune in Leadville, Colorado.
Organized during the 1880s by the Reverend T. Saunders, this congregation has served as a focus of black religious, social, and cultural activity in Utah from territorial days to the present. In 1907 property at this spot was acquired, and a church designed by Hurly Howell was constructed through the sacrifice and energy of the congregation under the Reverend T. C. Bell. Restoration was begun in 1976 under the Reverend D. D. Wilson.
Here is a table summarizing key information about the Trinity AME Church in Salt Lake City:
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Location | 239 E 600 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 |
| Founded | 1880s by Reverend T. Saunders |
| First Building | Constructed in 1907, designed by Hurly Howell |
| Historical Significance | First Black congregation in Utah, center of religious, social, and cultural activity |
