Lincoln Cemetery was founded in November 1877 by the Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (A.M.E. Zion Church), [1] and is located at 201 South 30th Street in the Penbrook area of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [2] [3]
| Lincoln Cemetery | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Details | |
| Established | 1877 |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40°16′50.49″N76°51′19.67″W / 40.2806917°N 76.8554639°W |
| Owned by | Wesley Union A.M.E Zion Church |
| No. of interments | over 4400 |
| Find a Grave | Lincoln Cemetery |
The oldest extant Black cemetery in Harrisburg, Lincoln contains many people re-interred from the approximately five original African-American Burial Grounds in the city of Harrisburg. Members of the Wesley Union church, spread out through the Harrisburg Area, were active in the Underground Railroad. [1] Civil War veterans, including Ephraim Slaughter, the last surviving Civil War Veteran of Harrisburg are buried in the cemetery. He served in the 37th regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops and the 3rd N.C. Colored Infantry. [1] [4] It is the site of one of the historical markers in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. [5]
In July 2021, part of the descendant community of Lincoln Cemetery began clean-up, restoration and reclamation of the grounds. [6]
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist denomination based in the United States. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. It cooperates with other Methodist bodies through the World Methodist Council and Wesleyan Holiness Connection.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, born Jarm Logue, in slavery, was an African-American abolitionist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and an author of a slave narrative.
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Daniel Alexander Payne was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. A major shaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Payne stressed education and preparation of ministers and introduced more order in the church, becoming its sixth bishop and serving for more than four decades (1852–1893) as well as becoming one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856. In 1863, the AME Church bought the college and chose Payne to lead it; he became the first African-American president of a college in the United States and served in that position until 1877.
Thomas James (1804–1891) had been a slave who became an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, abolitionist, administrator and author. He was active in New York and Massachusetts with abolitionists, and served with the American Missionary Association and the Union Army during the American Civil War to supervise the contraband camp in Louisville, Kentucky. After the war, he held national offices in the AME Church and was a missionary to black churches in Ohio. While in Massachusetts, he challenged the railroad's custom of forcing blacks into second-class carriages and won a reversal of the rule in the State Supreme Court. He wrote a short memoir published in 1886.
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Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church and Mount Zion Cemetery is a historic church and cemetery located at 172 Garwin Road in Woolwich Township, New Jersey, United States. The church was a stop on the Greenwich Line of the Underground Railroad through South Jersey operated by Harriet Tubman for 10 years. The church provided supplies and shelter to runaway slaves on their way to Canada from the South. The church and cemetery were part of the early 19th-century free negro settlement sponsored by Quakers known as Small Gloucester.
Mount Zion Cemetery/Female Union Band Society Cemetery is a historic cemetery located at 27th Street NW and Mill Road NW in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. The cemetery is actually two adjoining burial grounds: the Mount Zion Cemetery and Female Union Band Society Cemetery. Together these cemeteries occupy approximately three and a half acres of land. The property fronts Mill Road NW and overlooks Rock Creek Park to the rear. Mount Zion Cemetery, positioned to the East, is approximately 67,300 square feet in area; the Female Union Band Cemetery, situated to the West, contains approximately 66,500 square feet. Mount Zion Cemetery, founded in 1808 as The Old Methodist Burial Ground, was leased property later sold to Mount Zion United Methodist Church. Although the cemetery buried both White and Black persons since its inception, it served an almost exclusively African American population after 1849. In 1842, the Female Union Band Society purchased the western lot to establish a secular burying ground for African Americans. Both cemeteries were abandoned by 1950.
The history of Methodism in the United States dates back to the mid-18th century with the ministries of early Methodist preachers such as Laurence Coughlan and Robert Strawbridge. Following the American Revolution most of the Anglican clergy who had been in America came back to England. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, sent Thomas Coke to America where he and Francis Asbury founded the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was to later establish itself as the largest denomination in America during the 19th century.
William Howard Day was a black abolitionist, editor, educator and minister. After his father died when he was four, Day went to live with J. P. Williston and his wife who ensured that he received a good education and learned the printer's trade. He received his bachelor's and master's degree from Oberlin College. He was a printer and newspaper editor. He fought for civil rights of African Americans a number of ways, as a journalist, teacher, and leader of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was an orator, making a speech to 10,000 newly emancipated people on what biographer Todd Mealy called the first march on Washington.
Bishop Singleton T. Jones was a religious leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Although he had little education, Jones taught himself to be an articulate orator and was awarded the position of bishop within the church. Besides being a pastor to churches, he also edited AME Zion publications, the Zion's Standard and Weekly Review and the Discipline.
Rev. John E. Price was an elder and minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He was a minister for around 50 years. He was the founder and president of the Garnet Equal Rights League at Harrisburg. He wrote hymns and was an editor for the Zion Church Advocate and, with William H. Day, the Zion Church Herald and Outlook, the first paper of the AME Zion Church. Day was a minister, abolitionist, and educator.
Harriet McClintock Marshall was a conductor on the Underground Railroad whose home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania served as a stop or safe house for the clandestine network, along with the Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and other homes in the city. She offered shelter, food, and clothing to people escaping slavery.
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