Byrd's AME Church | |
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| Location | Smyrna Ave., Clayton, Delaware |
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| Coordinates | 39°17′32″N75°37′38″W / 39.29222°N 75.62722°W Coordinates: 39°17′32″N75°37′38″W / 39.29222°N 75.62722°W |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1894 |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne |
| NRHP reference No. | 82001023 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | October 19, 1982 |
Byrd's African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church on Smyrna Avenue in Clayton, Kent County, Delaware.
According to the U.S. Department of Interior, National Register of Historic Places, Byrd's African Methodist Episcopal Church was built on the outskirts of Clayton, Delaware in 1894. The church was named after the Rev. E. Byrd, who served as the pastor of Byrd's and Mt. Friendship. [2]
Prior to building and the establishment of Byrd's A.M.E. Church during the early 1890s, the Smyrna-Clayton area of Delaware boasted two A.M.E. churches. They were Bethel Church on the eastern outskirts of Smyrna, and Mt. Friendship Church in the countryside west of Clayton. [3]
Mt. Friendship was called the “Home Church” by Clayton members because prior Byrd's inception, all members of the black community, mostly railroad workers, walked several miles from Clayton to Mt. Friendship before the church's construction. This group of men, women and their families walked out to Kenton Road to Mt. Friendship, rather than through Smyrna to the older and larger Bethel Church. Within a decade after the raising of Mt. Friendship in 1886, the Clayton area residents began building Byrd's Church. [3]
Byrd's A.M.E. Church is a small Queen Anne style structure located at the eastern edge of Clayton, Delaware on a quiet street, Smyrna Avenue; its environment is the Smyrna-Clayton Road and the railroad tracks to the north, open fields to the south, and open, early residential development on either side. The church faces south on a slightly elevated parcel of land. It retains its earthen yard, trees, and considerable space on the deep lot behind its kitchen wing. The original main block is cornerstone-dated 1894. [2]
Clayton is a town in Kent and New Castle counties in the U.S. state of Delaware. Located almost entirely in Kent County, it is part of the Dover, Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,918 at the 2010 census.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a predominantly African-American Methodist denomination. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the first independent Protestant denomination to be founded by black people, though it welcomes and has members of all ethnicities. It was founded by Richard Allen (1760–1831) - later elected and ordained first bishop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816 from calling together of five black congregations of the earlier established Methodist Episcopal Church on the East Coast / Middle-Atlantic states area in the first General Conference, who wanted to escape the discrimination that was commonplace in society. It was among the first denominations in the United States to be founded for this reason, rather than for theological distinctions, and has persistently advocated for the civil and human rights of African Americans through social improvement, religious autonomy, and political engagement, while always being open to people of all racial backgrounds. Allen, an previously ordained Deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church, was elected by the gathered ministers and ordained / consecrated as its first bishop in 1816 by the first General Conference of the five churches - extending from the three in the Philadelphia area in Pennsylvania to one in Delaware and one in Maryland of Baltimore. The denomination then expanded west and through the South, particularly after the American Civil War (1861–1865). By 1906, the AME had a membership of about 500,000, more than the combined total of the two other predominantly Black American denominations - the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, making it the largest major African-American denomination of the Methodist traditions.
The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation. Its present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
The Allen Temple AME Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, US, is the mother church of the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest operating black church in Cincinnati and the largest church of the Third Episcopal District of the AME Church.
Harriet Tubman National Historical Park is a US historical park in Auburn and Fleming, New York, associated with the life of Harriet Tubman. It comprises three properties: the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, in Auburn; the nearby Harriet Tubman Residence ; and the Thompson A.M.E. Zion Church in Auburn. They are located at 180 and 182 South Street, and 90 Franklin Street, respectively. The Zion Church unit is administered by the National Park Service (NPS), while the South Street properties, including a historic barn and a visitor center, are jointly managed and operated by both the NPS and the Harriet Tubman Home, Inc. The church also works with the NPS in park operations. The Harriet Tubman Grave in nearby Fort Hill Cemetery is not part of the park.
Sidney Rose Badgley was a prominent start-of-the-20th-century Canadian-born architect. He was active throughout the United States and Canada, with a significant body of work in Cleveland.
The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Parsonage is an historic church and parsonage at 6 Sever Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The congregation, founded in 1866, is one of a small number of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregations in eastern Massachusetts, and is an enduring component of the small African-American community in Plymouth. Its church, built about 1840 as a commercial building and consecrated in 1870, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Bethel AME Church and Manse is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church and manse at 291 Park Avenue in Huntington, Suffolk County, New York. The church was built about 1845 and is a 1+1⁄2-story, wood-frame structure that is rectangular in plan with a gable roof and clapboard exterior. The manse was built in 1915 and is a 2-story, wood-frame structure, with a two-by-two-bay square plan.
Bethel A.M.E. Church, now known as the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church at 119 North 10th Street in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania. It was originally built in 1837, and is a 2½-storey brick and stucco building with a gable roof. It was rebuilt about 1867–1869, and remodeled in 1889. It features a three-storey brick tower with a pyramidal roof topped by a finial. The church is known to have housed fugitive slaves and the congregation was active in the Underground Railroad. The church is now home to a museum dedicated to the history of African Americans in Central Pennsylvania.
Star Hill AME Church, also known as Star of the East Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church building and cemetery located in Dover, Delaware near Camden, Kent County, Delaware. It was constructed about 1866, and is a one-story, three-bay by three-bay, gable roofed, frame building in a vernacular Gothic Revival-style. It features a small bell tower at the roof ridge. Interments in the adjacent cemetery are believed to begin with the founding of the church in the 1860s, but the earliest marked grave dates from the early 1890s.
The British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Church, Salem Chapel was founded in 1820 by African-American freedom seekers in St. Catharines, Ontario. It is located at 92 Geneva St., in the heart of Old St. Catharines. The church is a valued historical site due to its design, and its important associations with abolitionist activity.
The Bethel A.M.E. Church, known in its early years as Indianapolis Station or the Vermont Street Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Organized in 1836, it is the city's oldest African-American congregation. The three-story church on West Vermont Street dates to 1869 and was added to the National Register in 1991. The surrounding neighborhood, once the heart of downtown Indianapolis's African American community, significantly changed with post-World War II urban development that included new hotels, apartments, office space, museums, and the Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis campus. In 2016 the congregation sold their deteriorating church, which will be used in a future commercial development. The congregation built a new worship center at 6417 Zionsville Road in Pike Township, Marion County, Indiana.
Smyrna Historic District is a national historic district located at Smyrna, Kent County, Delaware. It encompasses 850 contributing buildings in the town of Smyrna. It includes the majority of residential, commercial, public and ecclesiastical buildings that pre-date 1920, the bulk of which were constructed in the mid-to-late 19th century. Notable buildings include the Cummins-Stockly House, Irishtown Tavern, Spruance House, John Cummins Mansion, A. G. Cummins, Sr. House, Governor William Temple Mansion, Daniel Cummins' Tavern and House, "Greybox," Delaware House, Jones' Drug Store, Smyrna/Clayton Masonic Building, the Peterson Building, Tilghman Building, Abraham Pierce Store, the "Colonial Hotel," Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Citizen's Hose Company No. 1, Benjamin Benson House (1834), Asbury Methodist Church, Ebenezer Cloak Mansion, and Mt. Olive Holiness Pentecostal (1876).
Bethel A.M.E. Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church located at Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana. The congregation was founded in 1836. The church was built in 1854, and enlarged and remodeled in the Romanesque Revival style in 1892–1894. It is a one-story, cruciform plan, brick building with a 2+1⁄2-story bell tower. The church serves as an educational, political, and cultural center for the local African-American community.
Asbury AME Church is an African Methodist Episcopal Church founded in 1845 in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the second African Methodist Episcopal church founded in Chester behind the Union African Methodist Church in 1832. Asbury AME Church is located at 1712 Providence Avenue and is an active worship center.
The Little Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, now the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, is a historic church building and congregation at 44 Lake Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1882, the congregation was Greenwich's first African-American congregation of any denomination, and remains a center of African-American society in the town. Its current church, built in 1921 on the site of its first church, is a good example of Late Gothic Revival architecture, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
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