Little Zion Baptist Church

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Title

Little Zion Baptist Church

Description

In 1891, the Little Zion Baptist Church was built for $25 by freed slaves on land donated by Jack Pearson, a former slave of the Fitzhugh family.

The founding congregation was known as the Old School Baptist Group of Blacks and Whites. Reverend Lewis Henry Bailey, a former slave, was their first hired minister. Reverend Bailey was sold from a slave pen in Alexandria, Virginia to a Texas slave master, freed at the age of 21, and returned to Alexandria where he found his mother. Bailey learned to read and attended seminary with the help of a philanthropist in touch with the American Baptist Publishing Society. Lewis mortgaged his home for $25.00 to finance the new church. Today, in 2007, a Korean Presbyterian congretation meets in the original church building on Burke Lake Road.

Source

Photo by Gilbert Donahue

Rights

Copyrighted material, not to be reproduced without permission of owner, Gilbert Donahue