Beyond the Church: Rebuilding Trust with and within the First Baptist Church Descendant Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2020, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation began excavating the site of the original First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, one of the nation’s oldest extant Black congregations. From the beginning, the project has been a partnership with the current First Baptist Church congregation, many of whom are descendants of its founding generations. As media attention grew around the project, descendants from outlying, often displaced, communities began joining the conversation. After seeing their histories minimized or erased at Colonial Williamsburg, many have a longstanding distrust in our institution. Beyond that, mistrust and intercommunity politics between the current First Baptist Church congregation and the members of its daughter and granddaughter churches often impact our growing partnership. This paper discusses First Baptist Church archaeology project and efforts to build trust in Colonial Williamsburg and rebuild connections between long-alienated communities and their connections to the church and its significance to our nation’s history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow