historic sites

17765 Three Notch Road 

Dameron, MD  20628 

301.872.4566 

The Hall was built in 1885 by the local chapter of the Knights of St. Jerome, the oldest Catholic fraternal organization in the Archdiocese of Washington.  In the late 1880s, the hall served as the first parochial school for black children in St. Mary's County. View from street.  Tours by advance arrangement.

16922 St. Peter Claver Church Road 

St. Inigoes, MD  20684 

301.475.4200 ext 1800 

Established in 1924 by Jesuit Father John LaFarge as a vocational institute under the auspices of the Baltimore Diocese, and operated by educators from the Tuskegee Institute, the coeducational school for African American students operated until 1967.  it was named for Archbishop James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore who donated money for purchase of the land.  A monument marks the site where the institute once stood.

47450 Lincoln Avenue 

Lexington Park, MD  20653 

George Washington Carver School, built in 1958, and its predecessor, Jarboesville School, built in 1925, served African American students in southern St. Mary's County.  Carver graduated its last high school class in 1966 when county schools were desegregated.  It became an integrated elementary school and then a community center.  It is located in South Hampton (formerly Carver Heights) a housing development built in the 1940s exclusively for African American civilian and military employees of the Patuxent River Naval Air Station.  Next to the school is the old United Service Organization Hall which served as the community's social center.   View from the street.

37345 New Market Road 

Charlotte Hall, MD  20622 

301.884.7320 

The first recording of Mt. Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church was in 1880.  The current church was built in 1912.  Camp meetings and tent revivals were held here.  In 1968 the church became Mt. Calvary United Methodist Church when the new United Methodist Church was formed in America.

37659 Ebenezer Way 

Mechanicsville, MD  20659 

301.884.8879 

This, the only A.M.E. congregation in St. Mary's County, is thought to be the oldest A.M.E. church in Southern Maryland.  The congregation appears to have existed in the 1860s.  A deteriorating log chapel, used as a church and school into the 1940s, still stands.  The present church was constructed in 1961.

(Route 247 in area of Oakville) 

Mechanicsville, MD  20659 

The church was founded by U.S. Colored Troops soldiers and built in the 1880s on land donated by a white member of Mt. Zion Church.  After 1945, membership gradually declined and Galilee was closed and in 1983, the church was officially burned in a "service of triumph."  U.S. Colored Troops soldiers are buried in the cemetery at the site.

47359 Lincoln Avenue 

Lexington Park, MD  20653 

301.863.8388 

In 1945 a growing home-based prayer band moved its worship services to the USO Building in Carver Heights.  Then they purchased an acre of land, and in 1948, built the First Baptist Church of Carver Heights.  In 1990, the church was given its current name.

21291 Three Notch Road 

Lexington Park, MD  20653 

301.863.5161 

Zion grew from Zion's Fair Methodist Episcopal Chapel, originally located on Hermanville Road.  The current church was constructed on this site in 1963 and was renovated and expanded in 2001.  The church cemetery is located at the site of the former Zion Fair Chapel.

19309 St. George's Church Road 

Valley Lee, MD  20692 

301.994.9416 

Founded as Bethesda Methodist Episcopal Church, about 1830, by a white congregation, it passed into African American use and is the oldest African American Methodist church in southern St. Mary's County.  The church was erected on the site in 1870 and was replaced in 1911.

45685 Happyland Road 

Valley Lee, MD  20692 

301.994.2090 

In 1891 thirty members of Bethesda Church formed an independent church built on land across the road.  Originally affiliated with the Baltimore Association of Independent Methodist Churches, later it united with the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church.  A new church was built in 1968.

45000 St. Lukes Court 

Piney Point, MD  20674 

301.994.9897 

St. Luke, the sister church of St. Mark Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, was founded in 1852.  It evolved from a religious group organized in 1813 as the First Independent Church of Negroes, later the Union Church of Africans.

27108 Mt. Zion Church Road 

St. Inigoes, MD  20684 

301.872.4006 

According to church lore, Mt. Zion had its beginning in the late 18th century when a slave named Isaac Braxton became a Methodist and preached to his fellow slaves.  In 1872 the church was constructed on an acre of donated land.  It later burned and was replaced by the present church in 1908.

12880 Point Lookout Road 

Ridge, MD  20680 

301.872.5142 

Founded by U.S. Colored Troops veterans, church members met in their homes until 1886 when they purchased the old St. Mary's Chapel in Ridge.  That church burned in 1887 and a new church was built.  First known as the Lowentown congregation, they became St. Luke Methodist Episcopal Church.  In 1968 they became part of the United Methodist Church.