Eight years ago yesterday, my husband and I asked a structural engineer who specializes in historic properties (among other things) to look at the ruin of Ebenezer AME on Bacton Hill Road in Frazer/East Whiteland Township. He reviewed the exterior. It’s not safe to go into the ruin – very unstable.

In 2023 I lamented the state of the ruin and said everything had the engineer told me a few years ago now that I passed along to East Whiteland Township and East Whitehead Historical Commission was sadly happening. The walls have never been shored up, and the development going along around it is taking a toll. Time, weather, and circumstances are not friends to this site.

I also had said then that before COVID hit, there was a lady from the National Trust for Historic Places I had connected with who seemed interested. Her name was Lawana Holland-Moore. I have tried following up since, but nothing, not even a reply. (Sigh.) Who knows? Maybe she will see this post and renew her former interest. There are so many historic places and structures at risk, but I just wish this place would matter for more.

today at ebenezer, hope rose like a phoenix from the ashes

Then last year (September, 2023), East Whiteland erected a local historic marker. It made me hopeful. It was at that ceremony that some members of a local AME Church (Mt. Zion AME in Devon, PA) helping out with saving Ebenezer thanked me for my activism efforts over the years. No one had publicly done so ever at that point. Pastor April Martin and Bertha Jackmon. Coming from them that really meant something special to me.

At the recent October 10th, 2024 East Whiteland Township Board of Supervisors meeting, I was also thanked in absentia by the East Whiteland Historic Commission and the Chair of the Supervisors, Scott Lambert, for my efforts dating back to 2013 or so. These comments occurred in the midst of an update I never thought would happen: funding for stabilizing the ruin of Ebenezer has been found between the township and the AME Church. It sounds like the project will start soon.

I couldn’t zoom or attend the meeting, so it was just today I watched the video of the meeting. I literally started to cry when I heard about stabilization becoming a reality. And I admit to being a little misty eyed over being recognized by my township. I am neither thanked nor recognized positively very often. Usually I am chided and berated and more for daring to blog and have opinions.

Ebenezer is very personal to me. When I first moved to Chester County to be with my husband, I quickly became obsessed with the ruins of Chester County. We drove past Ebenezer often. It was overgrown and tumbling down. I thought it was a farmhouse in decay. Then one day when we were headed towards Elverson to see friends, my husband told me to bring my camera and we would stop for a few minutes.

Stopped we did. I still remember walking through the dead weeds to the rear of what I thought was a farmhouse ruin. Then I saw Joshua. I think I held my breath at first. He was a Civil War soldier. Then I started to look in the weeds around some more, and I realized this was a burial ground. Then it hit me: this must be a church ruin. How could people not care?

That was 2013. And that is when I started looking into what I would eventually learn was Ebenezer AME.

The origins of the AME Church go back to the Free African Society which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. Richard Allen was born a slave in 1760 in Delaware. He was owned and then freed by Benjamin Chew, who was a prominent lawyer and Chief Justice of the Commonwealth from 1774-1777.

Ebenezer was a very early AME church, and Bishop Richard Allen was still alive (he died March 1831) when the Quaker, James Malin, probably decide he would deed the land to the AME Church so Ebenezer could be built (June 1831.) Ebenezer is  quite literally perhaps the second oldest AME site in the country, except for Mother Bethel AME in Philadelphia.  So you can see given the age of Ebenezer AME in East Whiteland, Chester County, PA that it is truly part of the early days of a church and religion founded in Philadelphia. Bishop Richard Allen died in 1831, just months before Ebenezer came to be after Joseph Malin deeded the land. According to the deed transcript, it was for a church and a burial place. My research indicates the first church was built (or finished) by 1835.

Some of the oldest grave stones in the cemetery date back to the 1830s.  An Eagle Scout named Matthew Nehring had been working on uncovering the gravestones a few years ago. According to the photos it appears some of the dead buried here are soldiers and veterans. One gravestone is for a Joshua Johnson  (Pvt., Co. K, 45th Reg., United States Colored Troops (USCT) (Civil War). I find this to be incredibly historically significant as the army began to organize African Americans into regimental units known as the United States Colored Troops (USCT) in 1863.

According to the East Whiteland Historical Society  this church used to serve as a “hub” of African American society in Frazer. Also according to East Whiteland Historical Society:

Members of this community have been documented as former slaves.  Their ability to construct this church demonstrates the prosperity and commitment of this community.

The trustees of the Ebenezer AME church purchased the land in 1831 from James Malin.  The oldest gravestones found in the cemetery date from the early 1830’s.  The congregation disbanded for a time between 1848 and 1871 during which time the building fell into disrepair.  By June 22, 1873 the church had been rebuilt and rededicated.  It continued to be used until 1970…Now it is abandoned.

Here is an excerpt of the document called  History of The Ebenezer A.M.E. Church from 1989:

A stone building, dilapidated and crumbling from the outside in, still stands on Bacton Hill Road….The gravestones which surround the building clearly show that it was a church.  Nearly all the headstones have fallen downhill and lie, face up crumbling from the wind and rain.

Records show that this church, formerly named the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, was built in 1832 on what was originally known as the Yellow Springs Road.  A celebrated gospel church, it was regularly attended by Negroes who lived and worked on Bacton Hill. Very few of the lives of these people, who were once a great part of the history of East Whiteland, have ever been chronicled.

Early tax records for Chester County show a listing of “free men”. Actually these “free men” were colored slaves who had been given their freedom from bondage when they reached the age of 38.  Later on, the age of freedom was lowered to 23 years of age and finally a state law granted that any person born in the state of Pennsylvania was a guaranteed free man.

The farmers of Valley Hills would often give these free men, after their term of bondage was up, a small plot of land for their own upon the hills in Bacton.  On these, the former slaves built small log cabins or stone buildings.  Many ran small farms while still working during the day timbering the summit of Bacton Hill and carting lumber down to the Great Valley for the lime kilns.

Think about it: these free and freed men who lived and worked around Bacton Hill built a church, and eventually a stone building was built. In 1989 when the paper was written, 80 graves were documented. When the next Eagle Scout documented graves, I believe he only documented 26. Some of the graves disappeared. Sinking into the murky and often swampy land (several springs are underneath apparently, and there are also interestingly old clay pits somewhere way off to the rear of the graveyard on another property), and it would also sadly not surprise me if other headstones had simply been removed. Yes, people steal from the dead and that includes headstones. That’s why East Whiteland PD has kept an eye on the headstones and grave yard in the past.

Anyway, riots and “disturbances” between 1848 and 1870 caused the church to not be used as much and it apparently fell to ruin the first time. But in 1872 the old church was brought back to life and reopened December 8th, 1872.  “Important” clergymen were reported as having been present, and in June of 1873 the church was re-dedicated as Ebenezer African American Methodist Church.

At this point the church remained in use until 1910.  Then the church may not have been used again until the 1940s. In the 1940s it was reported to have been some sort of a big thing at the church to celebrate it’s history. It was said people from all over Chester County gathered with “prominent” members of the A.M.E. Church.  It is believed that is when the church was electrified.  After the church stopped being used, and the woods and swampy marsh grass grew up around it, and a mobile home ended up next to it.

Some of the family names on the gravestones are the same as families still living in Malvern Borough and in Chester County!

For the past many years at this point, I have been writing about this.  I see the importance of this site intertwined with its 184 years of individual history combined with the 200+-year-old history of the AME Church founded by freed slave Richard Allen.  (The AME Church as all know celebrated its 200th anniversary this year in Philadelphia.)

Allow me to quote from Kristin Holmes’ article from July several years ago (2016):

The parcel’s 1832 deed of trust transfers ownership of the land from James Malin, a prominent Quaker farmer involved in the Underground Railroad, to three African Americans – “Samuel Davis, Ishmael Ells, and Charles Kimbul” – for the purpose of constructing a church with a burial ground in East Whiteland.

Ebenezer’s floor was a raised platform on stone piers, according to research by archival consultant Jonathan L. Hoppe, for the Chester County Historical Society. Its single room had a door facing the road; opposite was the raised pulpit. The interior walls were covered in wainscoting.

(See deed of trust by clicking on it.)

I first photographed Ebenezer in 2013. Then a few more times after that times including in June 2016 when the Inquirer article was in process. Then a second time, October 1, 2016. i placed the Philadelphia Inquirer articles. They are among my favorite articles and Kristin Holmes did an amazing job.

And we have to speak about Hiram. Hiram Woodyard was a Township resident and former slave who served in the Union Army as a teamster. He was a leader in the African American community and is buried at the Ebenezer AME Church. His home still stands on Congestoga Road. Other homes he built still stand. He was an inhabitant of Bacton Hill.

And we have to talk about friends I made along the way who died before they could see Ebenezer get this far. The late poet A.V. (Ann) Christie and Al Terrell.

Ann I met shortly after I started my vision quest on Ebenezer. She had been battling breast cancer but showed up at my door one day with a boy scout report and the Conestoga Turnpike book written by my friend author, artist, and historian Catherine Quillman who is a true Chester County treasure who shares her knowledge so freely and with an open heart. It is because of Catherine I was able to prove my suspicion that although the property had been abandoned, it really wasn’t and the AME Church and more specifically probably Mother Bethel still owned it.

Ann died in April, 2016. She was so wonderful a human. I actually do have some of her poetry in my personal library. In her obituary story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, John Timpane wrote:

Poet and friend Leonard Gontarek offered a poetic remembrance of Ms. Christie by e-mail: “Like the poet herself, A.V. Christie’s poetry is precise, elegant and generous. In her poems she gives us a model of the universe: If we possess integrity and trust the world, truth will come through. If we know the world deeply enough, we will see the logic of happiness and sorrow. If we listen carefully, we will hear the music coaxed from the dusk and fallen magnolia flowers, the pond, the clouds, and her beloved robins. It will be the music we hear as knowledge becomes wisdom.”

This is a poetry of grace and holy light.

Ann loved Ebenezer, and had at one point lived quite nearby. She grew frustrated with trying to engage people about Ebenezer. She was responsible for organizing and often paying for a few clean ups.

Then I met Al Terrell. He also lived nearby. We became friends after bonding over the same black Civil War Soldiers. He visited Joshua and Hiram too. When and said he was going to get Boy Scouts and volunteers in there to clean up AND would get the AME Church to say OK, I was so glad to hear it, but didn’t hold out much hope. The Boy Scouts were from the Willistown Troop.  And there were others. Bible study folks from Al’s bible study and Lee’s Lawn Service. And more. And this was just the beginning. Al threw himself into this the last couple of years of his life. He helped get the Veteran’s Day ceremony November 19th, 2016.

November 19, 2016 is when we held the Veteran’s Day Ceremony at Ebenezer to honor the black Civil War Soldiers there and others. It made front page news of The Daily Local. That was such an emotional day for me at that site, I cried. And I have no ancestors buried there, just my black Civil War Soldier Joshua Johnson whom I discovered one day many, many years ago in a pile of weeds that I thought were surrounding an abandoned farmhouse.

From the Daily Local article:

EAST WHITELAND >> During a humble autumn afternoon, a small ceremony paid homage to a long since abandoned graveyard housing African-American Civil War veterans, and others whose names have been lost to time and erosion.

For Bruce Reason and Al Terrell, the sight of the cleaned up Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery on Saturday was a welcome one.

Reason, 56, of East Whiteland pointed to one of the legible headstones bearing the name of one African-American Civil War veteran, Joshua Johnson, 1846-1916, and said he was related.

“It feels great,” he said about the site of the cleaned up cemetery. “I waited years for someone to come along (and clean up the graveyard).”

The person who came along and led the clean-up effort was Henderson High School sophomore Luke Phayre.

Phayre, a member of the Willistown Boy Scout Troop 78, had been looking for a project to complete so he could become an Eagle Scout….And Terrell, himself a former assistant scoutmaster working on rejoining the troop, suggested to Phayre that he clean up the graveyard as his own son, Andrew did almost two decades earlier.

“I thought it was a great thing to do, to honor the soldiers buried here,” Phayre said. “You couldn’t even see this (gravesite) from the street.”

The gravesite and the ruins of the old church sit alongside North Bacton Hill Road, near where the road intersects with Route 401.

Starting in August, Phayre and other volunteers worked to figure out who technically owns the abandoned property, get permission from the owners, and to clean up the graveyard and crumbling stone church laden with overgrown nature.

His efforts were recognized Wednesday when at 1 p.m., a ceremony led by the commander of the West Chester American Legion Post 134, retired Air Force Capt. Howard Crawford.

The ceremony also served as a way to honor the dead. It included a color guard presentation, gun salute, and memorial prayer.

Members of several different organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Marine Corps League participated in the ceremony. Three East Whiteland police officers were also present.

On that day I do not recall any members of the then East Whiteland Historic Commission or township supervisors, but I will always remember the members of East Whiteland Police Department who showed up to be part of the honor guard and keep the traffic in check…on their own time.

Then things slowed down, and Al Terrell died. I knew that November of 2016 that he knew something was not right with his health but he didn’t speak about it. And then shortly after Christmas that year, Al contacted me and said he wanted me to promise not to ever give up on Ebenezer. He was insistent, and that was not his way. Then one day in January, 2017 when I was sitting in my living room talking with my friend Tom Casey, my phone rang. It was Kimberly Boddy, a wonderful woman I have since lost touch with, but who at the time had helped with research because of other research she was doing.

And Kimberly has a really cool Chester County heritage as she is the granddaughter of the late Lee Carter, who was a self-taught Chester County artist who also had what I think was called the Road To Freedom Museum at one time.  The Daily Local wrote about an exhibit of Lee Carter’s paintings in Coatesville in 2015.

Kimberly is a quiet doer, and she carried on the traditions of community service that I believe she learned from her grandfather. 

I still remember sitting in my living room and saying to Tom, “I can’t believe it. Al can’t be gone.”

Al and I had been talking about trying to get someone with special radar equipment into the graveyard to properly map the graves once and for all those last times we spoke.  Ground Penetrating Radar.

I still miss Al. And Ann.

unexpected loss: r.i.p. al terrell

Things kind of slowed for a while until new blood and energy on the historic commission reinvigorated them as well as real interest from the supervisors in East Whiteland. Now I will freely admit it has been touch and go with the East Whiteland Historic Commission and me for years. Some people like me, some merely tolerate me, and a couple I have felt quite clearly dislike what they perceive as my interference on their patch so to speak. Then Pastor April Martin and AME historian Bertha Jackmon also had more time for Ebenezer, and now here we are. A historic marker and money for the ruin stabilization. This is a God is Good thing. I spent a lot of years feeling quite despondent about this site, until things started to happen.

I will note that to date I have never ever had a reply to any of the many emails (and some phone calls) sent over time to Philadelphia Mother Bethel’s Mark Kelly Tyler. Shame on him because before Mother Bethel, as one of his callings was Bethel AME in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He has talked a good game in interviews with the Inquirer, etc., but he has apparently never thought humble Ebenezer AME at 97 Bacton Hill Road in Frazer was important enough in spite of the inextricable and irrefutable links to Mother Bethel? Pity. But hey, he’s got his plum now as a newly elected officer of some importance in the AME Church as per the Inquirer this August and allow me to quote with some feeling of irony:

The Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church in Society Hill, was elected as an officer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) at its General Conference this week in Columbus, Ohio.

He was elected to become one of nine general officers: executive director of the Department of Research and Scholarship and historiographer of the AME Church, which has its headquarters in Nashville.

The election took place on Monday. The Tennessee Tribune posted the results, noting that six new bishops and nine general officers were elected. (There are at least 20 bishops in charge of geographical districts.)

“As I step into the role of historiographer / executive director of the Department of Research & Scholarship of the global AME Church, I find this moment to be bittersweet,” Tyler wrote in a text from Ohio Wednesday afternoon….In an interview earlier this month, Tyler said the new position would require him to resign as pastor at Mother Bethel AME, at 419 S. Sixth St., where he was appointed the church’s 52nd pastor in 2008.

He said he would remain at Mother Bethel for at least two to three months until a new pastor is appointed by the church leadership.

In his new role, he will have two offices, one in Philadelphia and one in Nashville…Tyler said he has always loved history, and he hopes to create a major documentary film about the church, possibly with PBS.

Gosh Rev. Tyler, history? Imagine that. So, a reminder that some of the earliest history of your church is here in East Whiteland Township at 97 Bacton Hill Road in Frazer, as well as elsewhere in Chester County. Maybe now you will have time for those emails? Return phone calls? Sadly I have my doubts, but hey, that’s on you. (And yes I am being deliberately pissy and unapologetically so.)

There is a little website about Ebenezer now:

https://www.historicebenezerbactonhill.org

However what is truly important is where we are today. And what do you know? Hope floats.

Are you watching Ann and Al? Joshua and Hiram? And the other souls? Gosh I hope so.

#ThisPlaceMatters

hello ebenezer

original 1989 scout report on ebenezer and an update

today at ebenezer, hope rose like a phoenix from the ashes

a new tale of ebenezer a.m.e. – an oral history

eagle scout luke phayre honored at east whiteland for his ebenezer project!

sometimes….it takes a really BIG and extended village

more tales of bacton hill

the site might be more cleaned up, but the ruin of ebenezer on bacton hill road doesn’t have much time.

a gift of chester county history from south dakota: learning about hiram woodyard

ebenzer a.m.e. on bacton hill road is in the news!

private joshua johnson and the other old souls at ebenezer a.me. on bacton hill road in east whiteland