Visit Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta Georgia
Springfield Baptist Church Info
This church traces its roots to the year 1773. This bolsters its claim to be the oldest African American congregation in the United States.
Served by African American pastors during the antebellum years, Springfield had the largest membership of any church in the Georgia Baptist Association. Some of its members emigrated to Liberia, and the church maintained a missionary connection with that country.
Springfield offered Sunday school instruction in 1859, even though such classes were banned by the prevailing slave codes. In 1866 the church hosted the first meeting of the postwar Georgia Equal Rights Association, which became the Georgia Republican Party a year later. The Augusta Baptist Institute was founded at the church; twelve years later it moved to Atlanta and grew into Morehouse College.
Springfield Baptist Church has two historic buildings on its campus.
Springfield Baptist Church’s 1801 building is the oldest extant church building in Augusta Georgia and one of the earliest in Georgia. Originally constructed by Augusta’s first Methodist Society, since 1844 it has been the home of Springfield Baptist Church, one of the earliest independent black congregations in the U. S.
In 1897, the congregation built a new church building next to the old building. The buildings on the campus are two of the last surviving buildings of the historic Springfield community. The Springfield Baptist congregation had been in existence for more than 50 years when it acquired its 1801 building from the first Methodist Society, which formed because of dissatisfaction with the Anglican-based church in Georgia. Throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, Springfield Baptist Church was an important religious, social, and cultural institution in the black community, spanning the change from slavery to freedom for African Americans. The Georgia Republican Party originated there as did Morehouse College.
The 1801 church building is an important and somewhat rare example in Georgia of a “New England meetinghouse” type of church. The simple, two story rectangular wooden building has two doors at the first floor topped by two arched windows and a smaller arched attic window in the gable of the street facade. The east and west sides of the church boast first and second floor ranges of seven wooden 12/12 windows. The interior of the church has an assembly-hall plan consisting of a shallow vestibule on the north end and a long narrow meeting hall.
When constructed by the Methodists as Asbury Chapel, the 1801 building was located at what is now 734 Greene Street and enlarged there in 1822. In 1844, the Methodist congregation built a new brick church, and the old wooden building then was sold to the Springfield Baptist congregation and moved to face Marbury Street (12th) at the southeast corner of Reynolds.
In 1897, Springfield Baptist Church moved the 1801 building back on its lot and turned it to face Reynolds Street. The congregation constructed a new brick church, which is a good example of the Late Victorian Gothic style and a significant work of architect Albert Whitner Todd. Rectangular in shape, the 1897 building has two square towers at the corners of the front façade. The larger of the two is the bell tower.
The church’s pointed-arch windows and entrances, tower buttresses, gabled parapets and steeply pitched pyramidal tower roofs are characteristic features of Late Victorian Gothic style. On the interior the entrance vestibules open into the rectangular sanctuary with raised platform at the opposite end and two sections of wooden pews. Since constructing the 1897 sanctuary, the congregation has used its 1801 building for offices, meeting rooms, and activity centers.
Origins
Savannah's First African and First Bryan Baptist churches have long contested with each other for the title of "oldest" church.
The origins of the Augusta and Savannah Georgia churches are intertwined. Around 1773 a roving evangelist named Wait Palmer organized a church among George Galphin's slaves at his Silver Bluff, South Carolina, plantation, located twelve miles below Augusta on the Savannah River. Among the original members were two who played major roles in black Baptist history, David George and Jesse Peters. George later left an account of his life, including his escape from slavery in Virginia, his flight into the Indian country, and his association with the traders employed by George Galphin.
George recounted how "Brother Palmer formed us into a church and gave us the Lord's Supper at Silver Bluff." Galphin's children taught George to read, and he began preaching to the little congregation on the plantation. George Liele, a slave of Henry Sharp and a member of the mostly white Buckhead Baptist Church, also preached at Silver Bluff.
George Galphin took the patriot side in the American Revolution (1775-83). In 1779, during the British occupation of Georgia, about ninety of Galphin's slaves, among them George and Peters, sought refuge with British commander Archibald Campbell. They were later joined in Savannah by Liele, whose master was killed in a skirmish with patriot forces.
The refugees formed a church in Savannah. When the British evacuated Savannah in 1782, George and many members of the church went to Nova Scotia and founded one of the first, if not the first, African American church there. The inhospitable climate, and an unfriendly reception by some of the inhabitants, caused George and his followers to migrate to Sierra Leone, where they established a church and a community. Meanwhile Liele and others of the Savannah church left Georgia for Jamaica.
Peters returned to Silver Bluff with members who chose to live in Georgia. According to an account given by Liele in Jamaica, Peters "preaches near Augusta Georgia , in South Carolina, where I used to preach." Peters, who took the name Galphin, was likely a free black in 1788 when he joined white Abraham Marshall in ordaining Andrew Bryan in Savannah. Partly on the basis of that event, today's Springfield Church uses the year 1787 as the date of its location in the village of Springfield, which was annexed by the city of Augusta in 1798.
After studying the origins of the various churches, historian Walter Brooks concludes, "the oldest Negro Baptist church in this country today is that at Augusta Georgia, having existed at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, from the period 1774-1775 to the year 1793, before becoming a Georgia institution." The country's first non-Baptist African American church was Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in Philadelphia in 1787.
Historian Mechal Sobel credits Springfield Baptist with 497 members in 1803. Following Jesse Peters Galphin's death in 1806, Caesar McCredy and Robert McGee served as pastors. In 1824 Jacob Walker succeeded to the pastorate, and Springfield enjoyed its greatest period of growth, claiming 1,000 members to make it the largest congregation in the Georgia Baptist Association.
In 1840 Springfield established the first of several daughter churches. In 1844 the church purchased the building known as Asbury Chapel from Augusta's St. John Methodist Church. The building, constructed in 1801, was moved several city blocks to the Springfield Church property on Twelfth and Reynolds streets and replaced the older church on that location. The building survives today as one of Georgia's oldest church structures.
Reconstruction
Henry Watts presided over the church during Civil War (1861-65) and Reconstruction (1867-76).
On January 10, 1866, Springfield hosted a historic event as 38 delegates from 11 Georgia counties met to form the Georgia Equal Rights Association. The members petitioned the Georgia legislature for the inclusion of blacks on juries, for civil treatment on railroads, and for the right to vote. On February 14, 1867, William J. White established the Augusta Baptist Institute at Springfield Church.
12 years later the school moved to Atlanta and in 1913 became Morehouse College. Thanks to the prodding of black leaders, Ware High School was founded in 1880 near Springfield Church by the Richmond County Board of Education. It had the distinction of being among the few high schools for black youth in the country. When the board decided to close the school in 1897, black plaintiffs appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a historic ruling delivered in 1899 in the case of Cumming et al. v. School Board of Richmond County, Georgia, the court allowed local boards of education to deal differently with the races in matters of education.
Under pastor George Dwelle, the congregation laid the cornerstone of a new brick church building in 1897 and used the older Asbury Chapel as its parish hall. The Reverend James Nabrit served as pastor from 1912 to 1921. His son, James Nabrit Jr., graduated from Morehouse College and from Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, Illinois; joined the faculty of Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.; and rose to the presidency of that institution.
He also served as deputy for U.S. supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case (1954) that reversed the policy set earlier in the Ware High School decision. Another son, Samuel Nabrit, also a Morehouse graduate, became president of Texas Southern University.
Recognition
Springfield Church received recognition from the city of Augusta Georgia in 1935, when the city celebrated its bicentennial. Various organizations marched in procession in order of their dates of origin. Kiokee Baptist Church came first, having been founded by Daniel Marshall in 1772.
The Freemasons were allowed second place. The city accorded the Springfield delegation the honor of marching third. Sixteen white organizations followed. In 1976 Springfield pastor Emmett T. Martin took the lead in observing the nation's bicentennial, the first in Augusta to do so. Official recognition of the church's historic status came in 1982 with its listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1995 a coalition of city and community leaders began construction of Springfield Village Park adjacent to the church. The park features abstract metal sculptures by nationally known African American artist Richard Hunt of Chicago. Plaques along an ascending ramp tell the history of American blacks as well as the history of Springfield Church.
Amnetities - Hours of Operation & Fees
Parking, Public Restrooms, Accessibility for mobility-impaired, Party Facilities. Call ahead for tours. Self-guided tour, no charge; nominal fee for guided tours.
Contact, Location & Website Info
Phone: 706-724-1056 - Location: 114 12th St. with the 1801 building at the rear facing Reynolds St., Augusta Georgia 30901 - Springfield Baptist Church Website
History
This church traces its roots to the year 1773. This bolsters its claim to be the oldest African American congregation in the United States. 
