Bath African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Bath African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. . This site marks the former location of the Bath African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The AME Zion denomination, chartered in New York City in 1801, began in the 1790s when discrimination against African American Christians forced them to form their own churches. Constructed sometime between 1895 and 1900, archaeological excavations conducted in 1997 indicated a twenty feet by thirty-three feet timber-framed structure resting on brick piers. No photographs of the church are known to survive but it looked much like the drawing at right, based on the oral histories of Bath residents and archaeological findings., Little is known about the church or its congregation but it appears that the membership dwindled until the last services in the mid-1940s. The building eventually fell into disrepair and disappeared from the landscape shortly after 1955., This cast iron bell to the right, the only remaining artifact of the AME Zion Church, called members to worship. Thanks to the preservation efforts of a neighboring property owner, the bell is once again in place on the former church lot. Parishioners are buried in a cemetery located to the left and a cemetery marker, dedicated in 1996 and containing the names of the interred, stands nearby. Religious institutions like the AME Zion Church played a major role in African American social and political development and the Bath church helps convey that important story.