Episode description

Episode 158 - Freedom's Path, The Story of Salem Chapel and the Underground Railroad

Do you have a significant historical landmark in your community - have you spent time there? Well I did. I spent time at the last stop of the Underground Railroad, where black slaves seeking freedom found community, safety and the true freedom they desired. I had the honour to sit in this small chapel and to let the walls and the wood pews tell me about the history of this lighthouse of freedom.

People of African descent began settling in the St. Catharines, Ontario area around 1788 and they brought their religion with them. Many were followers of Rev. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley was a staunch abolitionist and advocated for the end of slavery and the slave trade.

​Many of the freedom seekers that relocated to this area were also followers of Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC).

An AMEC Society was established in St. Catharines, Ontario between 1814 and 1820. A small chapel was built to serve the faithful in the Queenston Street area. When construction on the first Welland Canal began (1824-1829) in their neighbourhood, members of the Black community relocated to the under developed area of Geneva and North Streets. In 1835, they purchased property on North Street from abolitionist businessmen William Hamilton Merritt and Oliver Phelps to build a new AMEC. This church would be the second in St. Catharines and it would hold about 70 members.

In 1837, the St. Catharines group sent a petition to the AMEC New York Conference asking for pastoral care and to be received into the AMEC Connection. As a result of this action, AMEC missionaries stationed in Upper Canada were instructed to "regulate the existing Societies, organize more in other regions and also communicate that they shall be subject to the order of the Bishops, and amendable to the Annual Conference of the New York District." One year later, the New York AMEC Conference organized a church in St. Catharines with forty members and two local preachers. The church was named Bethel Chapel.

In less than a generation this Methodist group would out grow the second church. The Black community in

St. Catharines began to increase immediately after the US Congress passed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Thousands of free and escaped African Americans living in the Northern States moved to various parts of Canada West to secure their safety and freedom. The new fugitive slave laws also caused thousands of fleeing enslaved African Americans to settle in Canada.

In order to accommodate the influx of new comers, the AMEC congregation in St. Catharines decided to build a larger church. Resident freedom seekers began to construct the third church in October 1853. On November 4, 1855 the new AMEC was opened and publicly "dedicated to the Service of Almighty God" by Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne. 

In less than one year (September 1856), most of the Canadian AME Churches would separate from the AMEC Conference in the US and establish the British Methodist Episcopal Church (BMEC). This was partly due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Most of the AME Church members in Canada refused to attend Conference in the US because of the fugitive slave laws. They also wanted to identify themselves more closely with the country that granted them their freedom and equal rights.  

As a Methodist meeting house, from its early beginnings the AMEC in St. Catharines hosted anti-slavery lectures, civic protests and provided shelter and aid to the newly arrived freedom seekers until the end of the Civil War.  

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