AME Zion Church (1857)

Five men representing African Americans who had been meeting for some time in a local church, assembled to incorporate the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church at Canajoharie in 1857. They purchased a plot of land here on Cliff Street, just east of the home of Peter and Eliza Skinner. It is not likely that the congregation was able to actually build a church at this location s the trustees of the church sold the property on Cliff Street to Peter Skinner in 1874. The AME denomination is synonymous with notable abolitionists Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Rev. Jermaine Loguen. Rev. Richard Eastup, a freedom seeker himself, was appointed to oversee the Canajoharie mission church in 1862.

In 1857, trustees of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AME Zion) Church incorporated as a congregation. That same year, the trustees including George Gilbert, Francis Jackson, …. purchased property on Cliff Street from Pythagoras Wetmore to build a house of worship. Notable members of AME Zion denomination in other areas include: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Rev. Jermaine Loguen, & Thomas James (born a slave just south of the Village of Canajoharie in the hamlet of Buel), all are synonymous with Underground Railroad work.  The only record of church that has been discovered thus far is a notice in an 1860 issue of the Canajoharie Radii newspaper mentioning a donation visit for Rev. James J. Scott of “colored church.”

The next reference is found in records of Genesee Conference for AME Zion church appointing Rev. Richard Eastup to oversee this congregation. Eastup, himself a freedom seeker, served the AME Zion congregation in Auburn, NY (home of Harriet Tubman). While there, he worked to secure funding and clothing for other freedom seekers escaping their lives of bondage. It is not known when the AME Zion Congregation dissolved in Canajoharie. Also unknown is whether or not a structure was ever built on the property in which the congregation worshipped. The trustees of the church sold the property on Cliff Street to Peter Skinner in 1874.