Union Zion Baptist Church, which has served Gloucester’s black community since the days following the Civil War, was added recently to the Virginia Landmarks Register.
The Ware Neck church, and seven other properties across the commonwealth, were added to the register by the Virginia Board of Historic Resources at its Sept. 19 quarterly meeting.
Union Zion Baptist was founded by 17 people who resided within the Ware Neck community. In 1867, members of Zion Poplars Baptist Church and others in the Ware Neck community decided to have a church close by.
“If you were to look at a map of this area, there’s the Ware River, which is less than a mile” from here, said Mary Gordon, who is a descendant of two of the founding members of Union Zion Baptist Church (Britton Gardner and Daniel Gardner) and also serves as the church clerk/secretary. “On the other side of the road, that Ware River divides Ware Neck from (what’s) on the other side, which is a community called Zanoni.”
Gordon further explained that black people in the Ware Neck community would travel by boat and row across the Ware River to attend Zion Poplars Baptist Church. Eventually the decision of building a church within their community was made instead of going across the Ware River to Zion Poplars Baptist Church.
The founding members were Mary Carter, Bettie Evans, Washington Evans, Britton Gardner, Daniel Gardner, James Gardner, Britton Grevious, Jane Grevious, Mary Grevious, J. Gwynn, Grace Jones, Jasper Parker Jr., Sarah Reid, William Smith, Isaac Thornton, Robert Ward and Pattie Williams.
“I did research on the 17 people and found that the youngest person was Isaac Thornton and he was 15 years old at the time when the church was started,” said Gordon. “They (the founders) were ages 15 to 40 years old.”
According to Union Zion’s written history, the founders included an oysterman, farmers, a decorated Civil War hero, widow, laborers, pastor, pastor’s wife, a dairy maid and a housewife.
The first meeting place is said to have been at Singleton Road, which is a road that no longer exists. The meeting place was on the same property as their cemetery called Pole Bridge Cemetery.
Gordon said that the founders started the church by hosting a rally that raised $17. In the end, the transaction cost was $30 for the acre of land that was purchased.
Money collected from the rally was used for a property that they purchased on Singleton Road, which is not far from the location of the church’s current church cemetery. The building was built of lumber that was cut by hand. According to handwritten history of the church, which was transcribed by Gordon, the original building was erected by the support of the Freedmen’s Bureau at Hampton to be used as a schoolhouse as well as a church. The name of this church was The Colored Baptist Church of Ware Neck Gloucester County, according to a land deed from Feb. 8, 1870.
The original church was destroyed by a fire and a second one was put in the same exact spot in 1880.
“They describe it (the original building) in the church history as a little shanty, which is a one room little building.”
The second church also was destroyed by another fire after the women of the church had cleaned for Christmas services on Christmas Eve.
“There were two fires as I said at the little place where the original cemetery is, so as a result they later purchased this property,” said Gordon.
The church erected its third and present church building in 1894 and in 1952, the church was consolidated with Ware Neck Baptist Church, which was farther down the road from Union Zion.
Gordon explained that when Ware Neck Baptist Church shut down in the ’50s, the windows were reused from that church and installed in the kitchen and the pastor’s office at Union Zion.
The present congregation is made up of about 30 members. Several members of the congregation currently are descendants of at least one of the 17 founding members. The current pastor is the Rev. Willie Dickerson of Hampton, who has held that position since 2003.
Union Zion Baptist Church will celebrate its 157th anniversary on Sunday, Nov. 3 as they celebrate its anniversary every first Sunday in November.