Humble Beginnings
St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Raleigh’s first independent African American congregation, is also Wake County’s oldest Black church. The historic house of worship was founded several decades before the Civil War. The founders of St. Paul AME had been enslaved members of Raleigh Methodist Church, presently known as Edenton Street United Methodist Church. The Methodist church in Raleigh formed in 1811. As was custom during those early years, the Methodist congregation was integrated with enslaved Black people and a few free people of color among its white worshippers. Black journalist and biographer Charles N. Hunter noted that African Americans sometimes preached in the afternoon, and Black ministers like Alfred Craven drew large numbers of both races to hear his sermons. By 1812, African American worshippers, enslaved and a few free, formed the majority of Edenton Street’s integrated congregation. The number of Black church members at Edenton Street often outnumbered White parishioners, and in the early 1840s, to accommodate growth in attendees, African American worshippers began worshipping in separate afternoon services at Edenton Street Methodist Church and then in the old Christ Church structure that was no longer being used. By 1848, the Black members of the church began calling their growing congregation "St. Paul.”
In 1852 Black and White worshippers at Edenton Street Methodist Church bought the old Christ Church structure for the use of African American congregants. Enslaved laborers, at times, were allowed to receive a portion of money earned from being hired out to work. St. Paul AME member Norfleet Jeffries is one example. Black members of free status likely also contributed. In April 1854, the Black members of the church rolled the wood frame structure on logs from the Christ Church location at Capitol Square, the corner of Wilmington and Edenston Streets. They transported the sanctuary across the grounds of the State Capitol Building, down Edenton Street to the current location at the corner of Edenton and Harrington Street. The extraordinary relocation of the church structure was noted in local newspapers of the time and in a later letter to professor by Charles N. Hunter. The letter was authored the son of one of the men who marshalled the church to its new space, Norfleet Jeffries of the St. Paul congregation. According to the letter’s narrative, the move was conducted at night, after many hours of forced labor.
“...with torches and whatever they could get to make a light succeeded in moving the church to the site where the present St. Paul AME Church is now.”
Norfleet L. Jeffries
“The old Episcopal Church in this city, having been purchased for the colored Methodist Congregation, has been traveling through the streets on rollers for more than a week past, and has nearly reached its destination on a lot in the Northwestern part of the town near the Methodist Church.”
The church, from its original wooden frame to its later majestic brick edifice, presented a beacon of hope, community, and leadership at one of the capital city’s most historic and significant corners. St. Paul was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in November 1987, and the church is also a Raleigh Historic Landmark. 1853 North Carolina Methodist Conference rolls counted 240 Black members at Edenton Street Methodist Church, then only two the following year when African American worshippers moved to their own structure.