Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part III)

The "main road" in this part of Garrett County is US Rt. 219. It runs roughly north-south and through the high Allegheny Plateau that lies between the higher Appalachian ridges. In the summer, there is wonderfully green farmland all around. In the winter, well...let me put it this way: Garrett County averages around 130 inches of snowfall per year. Of course, we are there in July, and it is lovely.

As we head south, Backbone Mountain rises to over 3,000 ft to our left/east; wind turbines that look like pinwheels for a race of giants line the ridge-top. Backbone Mountain is the Eastern Continental Divide in these parts. The water in the creeks along Rt. 219 flows into the Youghiogheny, thence into the Monongahela, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond the wind turbines on Backbone Mountain, the water flows into the Potomac, the Cheseapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part II)

Our second mission in Garrett County was to try to track down what was known of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Oakland. So far as I knew, it was the only African-American church in Garrett County. Because we had already spied out the Quilt Corner of the TriState Relief Sale and had bought a quilt, we weren't too worried about missing any more gems there, as it were.

Our first stop in the second mission was the Garrett County Historical Museum on S. 2nd Street in downtown Oakland.We had of course been there before; it was there that I saw the exhibit of memorabilia from Oakland's great hotels that set me off on the trail of the African-Americans who worked at those hotels. Our visit this time was to see what the Museum might have on the old Bethel A.M.E. Church that served Oakland's small African-American community from around 1900 to 1930.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part I)

Some time back, I wrote about our explorations in Garrett County, MD, starting here, and continuing here, here, and here.

I mentioned in Part III of those posts my discovery in the 1900 census the name of an African-American minister living in Oakland (MD): Rev. William Walker.

Oakland's African-American community grew: the 1900 census for East Oakland shows a black minister, the Rev. William H. Walker, living in East Oakland with his wife, Virginia, and his mother-in-law. Because the 1880 census didn't show a minister, the presumption is that by 1900, there were enough African-Americans to have formed at least one congregation.

And the on-line archives of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper confirm that there was indeed an A.M.E. church in Oakland around this time: Bethel A.M.E., part of the Baltimore District, along with Frostburg and Westernport. Preliminary indications are that Bethel A.M.E. was located near the corner of 5th and E. High Streets in Oakland.