First Baptist Church

W-108

This church, home to one of the oldest continuous congregations organized by African Americans, traces its origins to brush arbor meetings held by 1776 at a nearby plantation. The congregation moved to a Williamsburg carriage house and in 1856 completed a brick sanctuary on Nassau Street. A school for black students opened there in the 1860s. The Rev. John Dawson, longtime pastor, served in the Senate of Virginia from 1874 to 1877. First Baptist moved into its sanctuary here in 1956. During the Civil Rights era, the Rev. David Collins led demonstrations for fair hiring practices and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke here in 1962.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Norfolk Journal and Guide, 23 June 1962. Williamsburg Weekly Gazette, 8 May 1856. Richmond Daily Dispatch, 10 May 1856. Linda Rowe, “Gowan Pamphlet: Baptist Preacher in Slavery and Freedom,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 120, no. 1 (2012), 3-31. First Baptist Church, National Register of Historic Places nomination (2017). Tommy Bogger, Since 1776: The History of First Baptist Church, Williamsburg, Virginia (2006). Joseph Straw, “Sustained by Faith,” Trend and Tradition, vol. 1 (Winter 2016). William Gordon, “Religious Roots of Blacks in Williamsburg,” Colonial Williamsburg (Summer 1992), 42-48. Thad W. Tate Jr., The Negro in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 1957). Jennifer R. Loux, “John M. Dawson (1829-1913),” Encyclopedia Virginia. Colonial Lot M Block 14 Historical Report; Taliaferro-Cole House Historical Report (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Reports, Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library. Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond: Pitt & Dickinson, 1894). John W. Cromwell, “The Earlier Churches and Preachers,” in W.E.B. DuBois, ed., The Negro Church (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1903). Joseph B. Earnest Jr., “The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia,” (Ph.D. diss, University of Virginia, 1914). Luther P. Jackson, “The Planting of Negro Churches,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 16, no. 2 (April 1931), 181-203. Records of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Virginia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870, RG 105, NARA, Washington, D.C.