The First AME Church in County

Local people of color in Lawrence County were not isolated from the news of national events - helping explain the enlistments of over 30 local soldiers in the U.S. Colored Infantry, after federal law allowed such enlistments in 1863. Much of this news and encouragement came from the early African Methodist Episcopal churches. Almost a decade before the Civil War began, there was an AME church in Lawrence County, Illinois.

The Zion African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was organized in 1853 on Allison Prairie under the leadership of Basil L. Brooks of the Indiana AME Conference. The trustees were James H. Pettiford, William Day Sr, and Rozell Taylor.  The existence of the Zion AME Church and the names of its first trustees is documented in a deed dated 23 July 1853. The Zion AME Church was located four miles southwest of Russellville.

The Lawrence County Historical Society recently produced an award-winning video, “An Eagle on His Button – The Story of the African American Civil War Soldiers”.  The video featured Oliver Russell who was born and raised on his father’s farm, just a quarter mile east of the Zion AME Church.   Undoubtedly, the Zion AME Church influenced many African American men in its neighborhood to enlist in the Union army.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaEmKMYKW20&t=68s

Each of the original trustees of the Zion AME Church had sons who served in Company B, 28th U.S. Colored Infantry.  Pvt Edward B. Pettiford (1846 – 1926), son of James H. Pettiford (1818 – aft 1880), was wounded at the Battle of the Crater.  Sgt William S. Day (1844 – 1864), son of William Day Sr (1794 – 1855), was killed in action at the Battle of Jones Bridge.  James Taylor (1843 – 1864), son of John Rozell Taylor (1813 – 1892), was killed in action at the Battle of the Crater.  The traditional lore in the Taylor family that (1) Oliver Russell drove James Taylor in his ambulance following his battlefield death and (2) the Army sent John Roselle Taylor his son’s discharge papers and a lock of his hair.  John Rozel Taylor, supposed to have been the son of a slave owner and his slave, was later sold, but not as a field slave.  Taylor became involved with his owner’s daughter and was to be hanged, but she pleaded for his life and they both escaped to Lawrence County from Kentucky.

The Zion AME Church had its own building by the end of 1853, as evidenced by documents from the Loose-Papers Probate File of William Day at the Lawrence County Courthouse. Trustee William Day purchased a stove and stove pipe for the Zion AME Church building on 26 October 1853 from stove merchant N. Smith & Sons in Vincennes.  The store account was not paid until after the death of William Day in 1855.

A corrective deed filed later lists the Trustees as James Pettiford, William H. Russell, and R. Pettiford.  James H. Pettiford was one of the first trustees in 1853.  William Horace Russell (1839 – 1874) served as Sergeant of Co D, 28th U.S. Colored Infantry during the Civil War.  He received a head wound from a shell at the Battle of the Crater and was a brother-in-law of James H. and Reuben Pettiford.  Reuben Pettiford (1832 – 1903) served as a Private of Co B, 28th U.S. Colored Infantry.  He was a brother of James H. Pettiford. 

There was definitely organized church life in the Black community of Lawrence County, Illinois, before, during, and after the Civil War years. On the September 30, 1865, Patrick Thomas wrote to The Christian Recorder, an African American Newspaper in Philadelphia PA, that he had “organized a Sabbath School five miles west of Vincennes, Lawrence Co., Ills. On the first Sabbath we met, the attendance was small, numbering only seventeen; but as time passed on, it rapidly increased. The present number of scholars in attendance is now forty. They have a superintendent and five teachers over them.”

This group became the ancestors of the members of the AME church in Pinkstaff and eventually the  AME church in Lawrenceville.

( For more detailed information about sources please contact John King, lawrencelore@gmail.com who researched and compiled this article.)