Trinity United Methodist Church (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Trinity United Methodist Church
Alexandria Heritage Trail
— City of Alexandria Est. 1749 —

In 1774, William Duke, a young preacher from Baltimore County, Maryland, arrived in Alexandria on his itinerant circuit at a time when there were fewer than twenty Methodist preachers in the British colonies duke had been personally recruited to ministry by Francis Asbury, the preacher who would later serve as the general superintendent of the Methodist movement in the United States. Duke initially preached to a small group of followers in Alexandria and formed them into a formal society, and by 1791, the town had officially become a "station of the Methodist Faith." This meant that the town's congregation had grown large enough to support a permanent minister, the first of which was Ezekiel Cooper, a twenty-seven-year-old man from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Working-class artisans, merchants, tradesmen, and farmers primarily comprised the early membership of the church. The young congregation quickly outgrew its first meeting house along Duke Street, when religious revivals in the fall and winter of 1802 and 1803 resulted in over 200 new members. The trustees of the church purchased a half-acre lot here at 114 S. Washington Street and constructed a one-story brick meeting house, dedicated by Francis Asbury himself in 1804. The original church building was expanded and remodeled between 1883-1184.

African Americans at Trinity
As early as 1791, Trinity's minister, Ezekiel Cooper, was preaching to African American parishioners at the church, and their membership and role in the congregation steadily increased. Prior to the Civil War, on average African Americans comprised 35-40 percent of the total membership of the church, many of whom lived in the surrounding free Black neighborhoods of Hayti to the southeast and the Bottoms to the southwest. African Americans and white members of Trinity Church worshipped together here in the meeting house, with African Americans occupying the galleries during services. By 1830, African American membership at Trinity had grown substantially with 222 African American members, compared to 412 white congregants. By 1834, that number reached its peak with 466 African American members, prompting them to establish a separate sister church in partnership with Trinity. Later that year, a lot was purchased at 604 South Washington Street and Davis Chapel was constructed soon after. The new church quickly developed its own leadership, including four African American preachers, namely Philip Hamilton, Moses Hepburn, Wiliam Wilson and, Israel Bailey. In 1956, the church was renamed as Roberts United Methodist Church, which it continues to be known as today.

The Schism of 1849-1850
In the 1840s, a bitter debate erupted in the Methodist Episcopal Church over the issue of slavery. At a General Conference in New York City in 1844, abolitionist members presented a resolution, which demanded that Georgian bishop James O. Andrew resign on account that he owned slaves. Alfred Grifith, the pastor of Trinity Church at the time, and a well-known opponent of the institution of slavery, co-sponsored the resolution. In 1845, the resolution passed, and many Southern delegates withdrew, forming the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

The schism directly impacted the congregation of Trinity Methodist Church, with approximately 30 percent of its members eventually leaving the congregation. Those who supported slavery established a new church across South Washington Street now known as Washington Street United Methodist Church. The remaining 70 percent of members who opposed slavery remained at Trinity, which was referred to as the Northern Church.

Post Civil War to 1942 and Present Day
Throughout the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Trinity Church struggled, as budgets were small, and membership had decreased. In 1939, the three main branches of Methodism, including both the North and South branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church, along with the Methodist Protestant Church, merged to form a singular Methodist Church.

In 1940, Virginia Bishop W.W. Peele assigned a young minister John H. Blakemore to Trinity with the task of merging with Washington Street. The Trinity membership chose a different path and decided to relocate from downtown Alexandria to the Beverly Hills-Braddock neighborhood. The entire church at 114 S Washington was dismantled due to WWII rationing of materials, with the pieces transported from downtown Alexandria to the corner of Cameron Mills Road and Allison Street. the church was reassembled there using bricks, pews and stained glassed windows from the previous building.

Erected by City of Alexandria, Virginia.

Additional commentary about the United Methodist Church:
In 2022, the United Methodist Church (UMC) experienced another schism with more conservative congregations splitting to create the Global Methodist Church (GMC). The leading issues that caused the schism were the blessing of same-sex marriages and whether non-celibate LGBT clergy could be ordained. While the GMC is more theologically conservative than the UMC, both church bodies allow for the ordination of women.