Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal

Ebenezer church as it stands today.

By Kelly Ramos

HIS 240, Spring 2025

Washington County is home to many famous sites of significance to African American history and culture. With examples including Tolson’s Chapel, Otto Farm, and Bethel - or Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) - to name a few. The name varies depending on who you ask, but both Bethel and Ebenezer are common to those familiar with the church. The historical significance of Ebenezer AME transcends that of Hagerstown, as it’s not only one of the oldest AME churches in Washington County, but also in the history of AME churches. 

The formation of AME churches came about in 1816, when African American delegates representing five separate congregations from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland met in Philadelphia to discuss their grievances with the limitations imposed upon them by the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Without a clear path to equal religious practice within the MEC, these delegates decided to form their own independent religious body, free of the limitations they suffered within the MEC. 

The cemetery plat would have worked more like a reservation system rather than a map of the cemetery.

The land that the original cemetery sat on, in present day.

1912-1913 photo of a conference that met at Ebenezer AME. Behind the men you can see what was considered the "Big" church.

Although African Americans were able to attend MEC services along with their White opposites, it did not come with equal treatment. Of all the earliest Episcopalian churches in Washington County, each one of them “was deeply enmeshed with slavery from its beginning” says Emilie Amt, a history professor at Hood College. She goes on to write in Down from the Balcony, that from the years between 1787 to 1849, a societal shift occurred wherein slaveholders actively began encouraging their enslaved to attend church as a means of control. While African American pastors were able to preach in MEC churches, it was often done so at odd hours of the day or night. There was also an issue of many attendees not being able to find a role within the church as many of them limited African American participation. Eventually, African American congregations became tired of this inequality and thus the AME branch was born.

The original plot where Ebenezer AME stood was nestled between Jonathan street and North Potomac on West Bethel street, a growing African American community in Hagerstown. Initially, its backyard was home to an African American cemetery, with the earliest burial being recorded in 1843. The original cemetery plat shows Revervend Thomas Henry as being one of more notable names to have a reserved plot. Burials in the cemetery continued on until 1897 despite it being condemned by health officials. By the late 1940s and into the early 1950s, the cemetery was replaced with a park, disturbing much of the original land and leaving the original bodies to be exhumed and placed in a concrete box that now resides in Rose Hill Cemetery.

The earliest photo of the church that exists is from 1840 and would have been of the first reconstruction of the building. This one stood until 1910 and is the building that Rev. Henry would have preached at, nicknamed the “Big Church”. The church was rebuilt for the second time in 1910 upon its original foundation where it stood until 1999. This iteration of the building was deemed structurally unstable and was rebuilt one final time in 1999. Now with the church only a fraction in size, the majority of the original lot is home to Bethel Gardens, a housing development built in the 1970s. The congregation now meets in a house-like structure that sits on the edge of Bethel street and although the building is no longer large in size, its place in history and the community is still felt today.