For decades, people drove over it without knowing. Cars parked on the asphalt. Tourists walked past on their way to the taverns and shops of Colonial Williamsburg. Under that pavement lay the foundation of a church that enslaved men and women had built with their own hands, and the graves of the people who prayed there.
On Friday, Oct. 9, the descendants of that congregation walked in procession back onto that ground. First Baptist Church Williamsburg, founded in 1776, celebrated the rebuilt meetinghouse standing once again on its original site.
“Black history is American history,” said the Rev. Reginald F. Davis, the church’s pastor, who gave the invocation, according to the Associated Press account published by Religion News Service. He has said the same words at every milestone of this project, and on Friday they finally had a building to stand on.
A Congregation Born in Defiance
The story of First Baptist Church Williamsburg begins outdoors. According to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, enslaved and free people of African descent first worshipped in secret, meeting in the open near Green Spring plantation and later in a wooded area known as Raccoon Chase.
Their preacher was Gowan Pamphlet, an enslaved man who worked at the King’s Arms Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street. Pamphlet preached about equality at a time when Virginia law barred large gatherings of African Americans. He did it at real personal risk.
The congregation grew anyway. Colonial Williamsburg estimates membership at about 200 in 1781 and about 500 a decade later. The Dover Association, a white-led Baptist body, formally recognized the church in 1793. That same year, county records show Pamphlet was legally freed.
In 18th-century Williamsburg, more than half of the town’s roughly 2,000 residents were Black, and few of them were free. A church led and filled by those residents was a radical thing. It was also, for its members, simply home.
The First Baptist Church Williamsburg Meetinghouse
Around 1800, the congregation began worshipping in town, in a building on Nassau Street on land owned by a white tradesman, Jesse Cole. African Americans could not legally own that property themselves.
Historians differ slightly on the date. The AP account says parishioners built the meetinghouse in 1805 with recycled bricks and salvaged materials. Colonial Williamsburg notes that the first written reference to the building dates to 1818. Either way, it was the work of a community with almost no money and almost no legal rights.
A tornado destroyed that first building in 1834. The congregation rebuilt, raising a larger brick church in 1856. That second church stood for about a century. Martin Luther King Jr. later spoke at the congregation in 1962, after it had moved.
A Pastor-Senator and a Freedom Bell
The Nassau Street church produced leaders well beyond its pulpit. The Rev. John M. Dawson pastored First Baptist for more than 45 years and served in the Virginia Senate from 1874 to 1877, during Reconstruction. A congregation that began meeting in the woods had, within a century, sent its pastor to the state capitol.
In 1886, as the church neared its centennial, members commissioned a bell. It became known as the freedom bell. After it was restored in 2016, President Barack Obama rang it at the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. The church and its history were added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
Those milestones matter because they show the congregation never treated its past as a museum piece. It kept building, kept serving and kept ringing that bell, even after the building it was cast for was gone.
From Sanctuary to Parking Lot
The hardest chapter came in the 1950s. Colonial Williamsburg was restoring the town to its 18th-century look, and the 19th-century brick church did not fit the picture. In 1953, while the congregation was raising money to expand, the foundation offered to buy the property. The sale funded a new church on Scotland Street, completed in 1956, and the Nassau Street building was demolished. The site was paved for parking.
Connie Matthews Harshaw, a First Baptist member and board president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, described what that meant to the people who grew up there. She told the AP in 2021 to imagine being a child who went to the church, and then riding by to see a parking lot.
Oral tradition never let the memory go. Members passed down the story that their ancestors were buried on that land. In 2021, the museum’s archaeologists proved them right.
What the Archaeologists Found
In October 2021, Colonial Williamsburg announced it had uncovered the brick foundation of the church’s first building, as PBS NewsHour reported at the time. An 1817 one-cent coin and the layers of soil helped confirm the find.
The dig eventually identified 62 burial shafts. Working with the church’s descendant community, researchers studied three sets of remains in detail. Those burials dated to the early 19th century, the era of the first meetinghouse, and DNA from one person confirmed African ancestry.
That is the kind of science that gives names and dignity back to the forgotten. Stucci Media recently covered how a grandnephew’s DNA hunt is bringing USS Arizona unknowns home, and the same principle applies here: the dead are owed an accurate record.
The ground gave up smaller treasures too. Colonial Williamsburg says excavators found more than 160 straight pins, mostly near the door, and at least 12 small money boxes, likely used to collect funds for the church or for relief. In October 2024, the foundation and descendants placed stone markers to honor those buried there.
Building It Back, Plank by Plank
The rebuilding officially began on Juneteenth 2025 with a groundbreaking that Colonial Williamsburg’s chief of staff called a homecoming. Builders worked in period woods, and a concrete beam was designed to carry the new structure over the original foundation so the old bricks would be preserved.
The finished meetinghouse measures 16 by 32 feet. It is built from pine and white oak, with recreated details such as half-round brick steps. The museum originally planned glassless windows with shutters. It reconsidered so the building could have air conditioning for Virginia summers.
Jennifer Wilkoski, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of architectural preservation and research, told the AP the windows hold restoration glass, handmade the way it would have been in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The altar table was refreshed for preaching. An accessible ramp and other finishing touches are expected in the coming months.
A Rededication Day Full of Faith
Friday’s service opened with a procession meant to honor the congregation’s long fight for faith, education and freedom. The Nassau Street Remembrance Choir sang before the invocation. Virginia state Sen. Mamie Locke spoke.
One of the most moving moments belonged to the Rev. James Ingram, the museum interpreter who has portrayed Gowan Pamphlet for more than two decades. He spoke at the ceremony, and his successor in the role, Brandon Lee, made his debut the same day.
Janice Canaday, Colonial Williamsburg’s community engagement manager, who traces her own family to First Baptist, called the project “a reclamation, a reclaiming of the narrative.” Davis described it as a “rediscovery of the humanity of a people.”
Why It Matters
Faith has always been the place Americans go when the law fails them. The founders of First Baptist Church Williamsburg had no vote, no property and in most cases no freedom. What they had was a conviction that they were children of God, and the courage to gather and say so out loud. That is not a footnote to the American story. It is the American story.
The rebuilding also shows something rare: an institution correcting its own mistake. The same foundation that paved over this church spent years digging it back up, working with descendants instead of around them. Churches, towns and families across the country are wrestling with how to remember hard history. This is one model of doing it with humility.
For families of faith, the lesson is simpler. A congregation is not a building. First Baptist lost two buildings, one to a tornado and one to a bulldozer, and never stopped meeting. The 215 members who worship on Scotland Street today are the living proof. As crowds turned out for Pope Leo’s visit to France this fall, a small Virginia church showed that revival can also look like a 16-by-32-foot room built on old bricks.
What Comes Next for First Baptist Church Williamsburg
The rededication is not the finish line. Colonial Williamsburg describes the project as a multi-year partnership with First Baptist Church and the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, and that partnership will shape how the site is interpreted for visitors in the years ahead.
In practical terms, crews still have work to do, including the accessible ramp. Brandon Lee now carries the role of Gowan Pamphlet for museum guests, taking over from the Rev. James Ingram after his decades in the part. That means a new generation of visitors will hear Pamphlet’s story told from the ground where he preached.
The congregation itself will keep worshipping where it has since 1956, on Scotland Street. The rebuilt meetinghouse is a place of memory and teaching, standing beside a church that never stopped being a living one.
For the descendants, that may be the most important point of all. Their ancestors’ names, graves and work are now part of the official story of Williamsburg, told in partnership with the people who kept that story alive when no one else would.
Visiting the Site
The African Baptist Meeting House and burial ground sit at 205 S. Nassau Street in Williamsburg, inside Colonial Williamsburg’s historic area. The foundation lists it as a self-guided site. Visitors should check with Colonial Williamsburg for current hours and ticket details, especially while finishing work continues.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was First Baptist Church Williamsburg founded?
The congregation was established in 1776 by enslaved and free African Americans in Williamsburg, Virginia. It became formally Baptist in the early 1780s under the preacher Gowan Pamphlet.
Who was Gowan Pamphlet?
Gowan Pamphlet was an enslaved man who worked at the King’s Arms Tavern and became the congregation’s leading preacher. He preached about equality despite laws restricting Black gatherings and was legally freed in 1793.
Why was the original church torn down?
In the 1950s, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation bought the Nassau Street property to restore the area’s 18th-century appearance. The sale funded a new church on Scotland Street, and the old site became a parking lot.
What did archaeologists find at the site?
In 2021, they uncovered the original church foundation and later identified 62 graves. DNA from one set of studied remains confirmed African ancestry, and burials dated to the early 19th century.
Can the public visit the rebuilt meetinghouse?
The site at 205 S. Nassau Street is listed by Colonial Williamsburg as a self-guided location. Finishing work, including an accessible ramp, is expected over the next few months, so check current hours before visiting.
Rocci J. Stucci is the founder and CEO of Stucci Media and host of The Rocci Stucci Show.
