Long's Chapel and Zenda

Long's Chapel was built in 1870, a year after William and Hannah Carpenter and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ deeded land here “to colored people . . . for . . . a church, burial ground, and a school house.” Henry Carter, Milton Grant, William Timbers, and Richard Fortune, all formerly enslaved, owned two-acre “home plots” where the community of Zenda grew to 17 households of 80 people by 1900. The school, where notable Harrisonburg educator Lucy Simms began her career, closed in 1925. In Zenda, blacks freely exercised new rights to worship, marriage, education, property, and burial in a marked gravesite.