The John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church (JWMC) is an enduring landmark of community, faith, and perseverance and has played a significant role in the lives of the region’s African Americans. The first church was organized in 1838 on a tiny 1/8th-acre parcel to serve an area then known as Oxford Neck. This location at that time was surrounded by several plantations and by now-forgotten Black communities like Mills Town, Screamersville and Williamsburg. A decade later, an adjacent parcel was purchased for a cemetery.
The middle of the 19th century, before and after the Civil War, was a time of rapid growth and change in Oxford. Records from 1851 show that 31 whites and 26 Blacks worshipped together here at the John Wesley Church. But by 1856, White Methodists in the area had organized and built Saint Paul’s Church (Stop # 28) for themselves in the village of Oxford, and this location was left to the growing number of Black worshipers.
In 1875, a new single story frame structure that you see here today replaced the original small chapel. For the next decade, the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church remained the only place of worship available to the region’s African Americans. Even after 1883, when Oxford’s Black residents founded the much larger Waters Methodist Episcopal Church, on Market Street (Stop #21), this church and its graveyard continued to be the site of prayer and celebration.
"I can just hear the older people now, when they start singing them old hymns and you just can hear ‘em, you can just look at ‘em, when you walk in that church you can just see’em, just startin’ up singin’ and I say they didn’t have any music, but they get that foot goin’ and clappin’ and they start singin’ them old hymns and it just, oh, you just don’t know how it feels. It’s somethin’. Its an experience that only comes once in a lifetime…” - Alice Banks
In 1940, Miss Nellie Leatherberry, opened the separate little cook shop on the site to provide meals and refreshments to church members attending services and events.
"… this church when you walk into it you feel something because the neighbors that live around , the neighbors that live on the farms around the church they used to sit on their porch and listen to the singing every Sunday and I thought that was unusually beautiful. They had a little building outside there where they made their money by selling dinner and the people also said the food was delicious. Well, I think most of the good, best cooks lived up here anyway." - Frances Curtis
The church closed its doors for services in 1978. Watching it fall into disrepair, descendants of the church members organized a movement to save the property. By 2015, Black and White residents of Oxford worked together to restore the church and the cook shop, clear and identify all the graves, and solidify plans for the long-term preservation of the property.
Be sure to take a few minutes to rest here and imagine the joyous hymns that arose from this place for so many generations.
