Restoring Faith: Community Archaeology and the Search for America’s Oldest Black Baptist Church

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Founded in 1776 the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg is considered one of the oldest Black churches in America. Oral history states that a white landowner gave the congregation its first building, which was destroyed by a tornado and replaced in 1856 with a brick church. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation acquired and demolished the second church in 1956. A community engaged archaeological project between Colonial Williamsburg and the Church’s descendant community developed in 2020 to return the first meeting house to the landscape. Archaeological evidence has provided new information and interpretations about the architecture of the first meeting house, the landscape that surrounded it, and the experience of its earliest worshipers. This evidence suggests that the congregation, rather than the white landowner, built the first meeting house and shaped the landscape themselves. This project has allowed the community to reshape white-centered narratives about the Church’s earliest days in Williamsburg.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow