Zion Church Graves of the Freed Formerly Enslaved Persons

Consecrated April 15, 2023

Zion Chapel was established in 1738. It was a "free church", open to all denominations, but the vast majority of members were Anglican, who became Episcopalian when the U.S. church separated from the Church of England after the Revolutionary War. Zion was granted a "Certificate of Organization" by the fledgling Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina in April of 1823, the Bicentennial that we are celebrating today. The current church building was built in 1856, and the grounds around it became the present graveyard.

Zion Church had a diverse congregation, even before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Our records prior to 1864 were destroyed by the occupying Union Army, but we have information from earlier Bishops' visits to Zion Church. Bishop Atkinson reported that Zion's membership included one African-American at the time of the consecration of our sanctuary in November 1856, and that number had grown to five by 1861, the beginning of the Civil War.

The Reverend Sarah Saxe became our rector in 2015. Reverend Sarah had a passion for research and history, and she pored over all of our oldest records. In the course of this, she found the names of eight members, identified by race as African-American, who were buried in the Zion graveyard from 1864 through 1870. On further research, she found the record of their baptism and membership in Zion, including the names of their Zion sponsors. The six females were recorded by first name only, and the two males had both first and last names. The clear inference was that these were formerly enslaved persons who had been freed and embraced as members. She knew, from graveyard records, the general location of these graves, but there were no existing markers. She guessed that these were originally wood, which were lost with time.

Sarah contracted a service with ground-penetrating radar to search the graveyard. The GPR was able to identify interred remains in the expected area, which was agreed as having to be the remains of the freed formerly-enslaved persons. The Zion Vestry thereafter purchased and installed a permanent monument in memory of these early African-American members, who are an important part of our legacy.

There is nothing we can say or do in later years to atone for what these eight members, and thousands more like them, suffered during their time of enslavement. We can only rejoice somewhat that our predecessors in Zion Church acknowledged the dignity of all people, that they embraced them as sisters and brothers in the fellowship of Jesus Christ as members, and that they received this last measure of respect at the end of their mortal lives. May they rest in peace in the loving arms of our Creator.