Draft:Friendship Chapel Baptist Church and Religiosity of Enslaved People

• Comment: The first sentence reads almost promotionally, and unless I'm missing something, the other part of the "and" in the title is far more represented and reliably sourced here, which probably wasn't intended. mwwv ^converse∫_edits 20:35, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

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Friendship Chapel Baptist Church of Wake Forest, North Carolina has long been a cornerstone of the Black community, with roots in the pre-Civil War South. Enslaved individuals of the local Purefoy-Dunn Plantation created a religious community that worshiped in secret using a blend of Christian and traditional African religious practices at a nearby "hush place," now identified as the Old Graveyard of Friendship Chapel. Recent discoveries have allowed historians and archaeologists to learn even more about antebellum religious practices and their long lasting societal impacts on the black community in Wake Forest.

Friendship Chapel Baptist Church

Origins of Friendship Chapel

Located in Wake Forest, North Carolina, the Friendship Chapel Baptist Church was built in the late 19th century on what was then the Purefoy-Dunn Plantation. Its origin was thanks, in large part, to Nelson Ligon (also called "Uncle Nelson"), an enslaved Christian man. When the institution of slavery first made its way to the Americas, enslaved people primarily practiced traditional African religions or Islam. Over time, however, a significant number converted to Christianity, many of which continued to blend African spiritual practices and beliefs with Christian influence.

By the 19th century, Protestant Evangelists began to encourage enslaved people to convert in large numbers. Similarly, during the First and Second Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, denominations including Baptists and Methodists in the northern United States began to speak out against slavery. These denominations had a particular appeal amongst enslaved and freed Black people because their practice of Christianity incorporated "manners of worship that African men and women carried with them to America, including spirit possession, call-and-response singing, shouting, and dancing."

Similarly, the local Forestville Baptist Church allowed Nelson Ligon and other enslaved people from the Purefoy-Dunn Plantation to attend services from a separate gallery. At one such service in 1865, Ligon was "overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit" and allegedly leapt from the slave gallery into the white-only pulpit below. Members of the white congregation met shortly thereafter to decide what to do, which led one of the landowning men in attendance to donate some of his land for the foundation of a Black church, the Friendship Chapel.

Interestingly enough, the land donated contained the bush harbor (also called the "hush place") where slaves at the Purefoy-Dunn Plantation had regularly gathered to conduct their own spiritual practices. Indeed, enslaved people often practiced their own religiosity (based in a mixture of Christianity and African spiritualism) in secret. According to Albert Raboteau of the Christian History Institute, while slaves attended "regular Sunday worship in the local church," many also participated in "illicit, or at least informal, prayer meetings." In order to practice, slaves would meet secretly, often at night and in secluded locations, especially "woods, gullies, ravines, and thickets (aptly called 'hush harbors')" such as the one that would house the original Friendship Chapel Baptist Church in the late 19th century.

The original church building, completed around 1866, was a small log cabin with a fireplace and a single window. The cabin was followed by a second structure, utilized from 1873-1890, which was a rectangular building containing ten windows. There is very little known about the third structure built in 1890, but according to Friendship Chapel, the building included a belfry and steeple and was considered "the most beautiful of its kind." Unfortunately, the three original structures are no longer standing, primarily due to the degradation of the materials they were constructed with.

A fourth building was constructed in 1929, containing seating for 300 individuals. It was at this point that the total congregation reached its historic peak enrollment, with members numbering around 800. This, along with a fifth building constructed in 2000 to host Friendship Chapel Baptist Church's current services, still stands today.

Lasting Impacts

By the late 1800s, black people had started to form their own churches (such as Friendship Chapel) across the south. These primarily operated in the Baptist tradition, because Baptists allowed black participation in the church as both members and preachers.

Going forward, black churches would become community centers, providing spiritual guidance, education, and a safe space to express themselves without the fear of discrimination–especially after Emancipation. Many freedpeople felt liberated by "the ability to finally read the Bible for themselves" and often would "spend all evening or Sunday attending night school or Sunday school classes." Black churches, moreover, were a source of leadership in the uncertainty of Reconstruction era life. Especially in primarily Black communities, "many political leaders and officeholders were ministers" and "access to pulpits and growing congregations provided a foundation for ministers' political leadership." In the example of Wake Forest's Friendship Chapel Baptist Church, Nelson Ligon was recognized as both a spiritual and community leader.

Friendship Chapel's "Old Graveyard" and Associated Research

The Old Graveyard of Friendship Chapel Baptist Church, also called the "hush place," is a patch of forest in a wooded area of the former Purefoy-Dunn plantation where enslaved people would congregate to worship before any local church was available to them. Like many other enslaved people of the time, they practiced their own form of spirituality privately, often under the cover of night. Now, although the buildings associated with the Friendship Chapel Baptist Church have moved slightly, the Old Graveyard remains in its original location.

According to the Wake Forest Museum, the wooded "hush place" is home to "what are thought to be hundreds of graves, marked and unmarked, covering a span of time that stretches from the 1800s to the 1950s." In collaboration with New South Associates Cultural Resource Management, the Museum conducted a survey of the gravesite using radar technology and succeeded in identifying "567 graves in the 1.64 acre site," including hundreds of individual graves and at least one mass grave, which archeologists believe was created during the 1918 influenza outbreak.

Before emancipation, slaves in the Wake Forest area were charged with carrying out all death rites both for each other and for the white families on the plantation. Duties included "washing and dressing the bodies, digging the graves, and maintaining the white family's cemetery." Therefore, enslaved people on the Purefoy-Dunn Plantation would certainly have had the experience to create a cemetery like that of the Old Graveyard. In fact, some freedmen who had once performed these duties often took up positions as funeral directors and morticians, especially in black churches.

The graves located in the cemetery face east, which is noted as a reflection of "both Christian and African customs and religious views about the afterlife." This specific style of graveyard layout is referenced in Southern American and North Carolinian folklore, which states that "[g]raves should be dug east and west so that the dead will be facing the east toward Gabriel when he blows his horn"

The decision of whether or not a headstone or other gravesite marker would be placed would be left to the slave owners. Therefore, markers on the graves of enslaved people were rare. However, the presence of several engraved headstones in the Old Cemetery may indicate change in the Reconstruction era, as freedpeople had increasingly more autonomy to observe death rituals of their choosing.