An Historical Research on The Fisk Chapel (1882-1975)
This brochure
is being distributed to every resident in Fair Haven to increase awareness of one of the Borough’s historical treasures.
Research for this project and the printing of this brochure were supported in part by funding from the Monmouth
County Historical Commission and the New Jersey Historical Commission in the Borough of Fair Haven.
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The history of Fisk Chapel, the building now known as Bicentennial Hall, originated with a congregation formed in Fair
Haven in 1858. This church was first known as the Bethel A.M.E. Church, and was located on the north side
of River Road, approximately where the entrance to Shrewsbury Yacht Club is now.
To better understand and appreciate the importance of Bethel Church prior to the building of Fisk Chapel in 1882, we
must look at local religious organizations in the area, and the earliest church formed in what is now Fair Haven.
Fair Haven was included within the vast area of Shrewsbury Township, itself one of Monmouth county’s first three
townships. The peninsula between the Navesink River on the north, and the Shrewsbury River on the south
was known from the seventeenth century at Rumson Neck and the earliest major settlement was at Shrewsbury village.
Three congregations, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, built houses of worship at Shrewsbury village, and
were the only churches on Rumson Neck until a Methodist church was built on Rumson Road in 1823. Om the
northern side of the Rumson Neck, there were three small settlements along the Navesink River: Red Bank,
Fair Haven, and Port Washington (now part of Rumson).
Rumson Neck’s fifth congregation is recorded as being organized in Fair Haven in 1833. This
church founded for the “colored” community, was eventually known as the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
In the early nineteenth century in the Mid Atlantic States, it was a common practice for Negro Methodists to form their own
congregations, and the A.M.E. Zion branch was but one of these.
It is surmised that the congregation first met in members’ homes, as research indicates that a “man of
color”, one Samuel Still, deeded land on February 11, 1842 to the Free African Church for the erection of a house of
worship. The church was built several hundred feet south of the Navesink River on Brown’s Lane, just
south of its intersection with River Road.
The
significance of this A.M.E. Church to local history is that it was the first church on the northside of Rumson Neck, and predated
subsequent churches later erected in Red Bank, Fair Haven, and Rumson. Also significant is that it was
the Fair Haven area’s first organization of a sense of community.
Samuel Still also deeded land to the trustees of the Fist African Church for the erection of a school house to be called
“Free African School” in February 1850. This school was located north of Brown’s Lane,
north of the “New Road”, as River Road was called at the time.
In 1858, Fair Haven Village
gained another church when “persons of color” formed the Bethel A.M.E. Church. Members of the
new church included Anthony Quero, Edward Brown, Jacob Brown, and a Mr. Still, who may be the same Samuel Still whose land
was deeded to the A.M.E. Zion Church and Free African School.
The Brown brothers, whose family homestead was on Brown’s Lane and Quero, another resident of Browns Lane, actually
passed the Zion Church on their way to the Bethel Chapel. Only some 600 feet separated the two sister churches.
Unfortunately, no illustrations
or photographs have been found to show either of these two churches. Bethel was described as a neat, simplistic
wooden structure on the river bank. Built on the hillside it is very likely that the rear of its basement
would be at ground level.
Anthony
Quero, who is mentioned as leader of Bethel in 1858, had been a trustee of the Zion Church in 1842. It
is uncertain whether the new Bethel Church was formed due to a split within the Zion congregation.
Records would indicate that both churches operated separately until 1873. On February 9 of that
year, the Zion A.M.E. Church caught fire and was completely destroyed. This church was never rebuilt on
the site, and the congregation journeyed to Red Bank for their worship service. Some sources stated that
after the Zion Church burned, the Zion members briefly joined with the Bethel Chapel. Several years after
the fire, many of the congregation who journeyed to Red Bank each week expressed a desire to build a new church in Fair Haven.
This new church eventually is built and named Fisk Chapel. It is unclear if the Bethel Church is
still operating as a group at this time. Also, many of the Zion group remained as a Red Bank congregation,
and have continued to the present as the Shrewsbury Avenue A.M.E. Zion Church.
Between the building of Bethel Chapel and the newer Fisk Chapel, the Civil War took place. One of the many distinguished
Union officers of that conflict was Clinton Bowen Fisk (1828-1890). Born in Clapps Corners (now Greigsville)
N.Y., Fisk was living in Missouri when the conflict started, and joined the Union cause, soon becoming a colonel of the 33rd
Regiment-Missouri Volunteers. Coming to the attention of President Lincoln, Fisk was to be Lincoln’s
choice for organizing and running the Freedman’s Bureau upon war’s end.
Fisk, a very devout Methodist, was also an eloquent and thrilling speaker. He was an immediate necessity
of making laws where the Negro had equal rights of testimony with whites. Among other far thinking ideas,
Fisk advocated special courses that would give special attention to civil rights.
After the Civil War, the former brevetted major general was assistant commissioner of the Freeman’s Bureau in
Tennessee. He developed a school for Negro leadership at Nashville that would become Fisk University.
General Fisk was appointed to the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1874, and was its president from 1881 to 1890.
Putting aside business activities after losing a considerable fortune in a mining venture, Fisk became a resident of
Rumson Neck about 1878, having one of the finest on the Rumson Road, east of Bellevue Avenue in the “Rumson Hills”.
From his home he would conduct campaigns that marked his attempt to become Governor of New Jersey (1886) and President
of the United States (1888) as standard bearer of the Prohibition Party.
Soon after his arrival in Rumson, General Fisk became very interested in the local Black community at Fair
Haven village. Many of his servants were Blacks, and Fisk apparently won the admiration and respect of
these employees.
As previously mentioned,
it was recorded that many of the Black residents of Fair Haven journeyed to church services in Red Bank after the Zion Church
fire of 1875. Travel in those days was an ordeal for most everyone. Those who
had wagons plodded their way over rutted, dusty roads. Sometimes a bed of hay or straw was placed in the
wagon for the comfort of those seated on the floor. Sleds were used in winter on frozen snow.
Apparently General Fisk was aware of this inconvenience and sought to remedy it by building a new church for the Black
community at Fair Haven. Several months prior to the building of the church, Fisk was instrumental in the
construction of a school for lacks on what is now Fisk Street, which ran parallel to the Port
Washington Road, known
a century ago as “The Fair Haven Road” (now River Road).
The ground for the new church, locate next to the new schoolhouse, was broken on December 10, 1881. The
land and some $5000 to construct the edifice were provided by General Fisk.
Best described as a plain structure with some Victorian touches, the new chapel had some modern innovations for its
time. Included were lighting by means of kerosene lights that could be lowered from the ceiling and then spring back into
place, gas pipes in the walls for future use for light, although this was never done, and heating by a central furnace.
Electricity eventually furnished the main lighting and the kerosene lights were removed.
By mid-August, 1882, work on the church had been completed. Newspaper accounts of August 16, 1882
described it as “one of the best appointed and most conveniently arranged churches in Monmouth County”.
This report merely called it “the new Methodist Church erected by the colored community”. Apparently
at the day of its dedication, August 20, 1882, the name “Fisk Chapel” was first used publicly in reference to
the church. Several years later, around 1889, a parsonage was built to accommodate the pastor of Fisk Chapel,
and therefore was placed between the Chapel and the schoolhouse.
A few years after Fisk Chapel was dedicated, the original Bethel Chapel on River Road, opposite Browns Lane, was bought
by William L. Covert. Covert, whose property was adjacent to the old chapel, cut the building in two and
added each section to two of his riverfront cottages.
Fisk Chapel served the Fair Haven community as a house of worship and a place where the Black residence gathered for
social events. After the completion of the schoolhouse and Fisk chapel, many Black persons came into the
vicinity to build homes. Partially because General Fisk had built houses for his employees on tracts near
the Fisk street buildings, the surrounding area became the so called “colored section” that eventually would reach
Smith Street on the west, Third Street and Hendrickson Place on the south, and Church Street on the east. Fisk
Street served as northern “border” of the neighborhood, that often was nicknamed “The Sandfields”
because of the dry sandy soil.
For over fifty years, Fisk Chapel annually held a program called the Emancipation celebration. This
observance started about 1890 and continued down to the 1940’s. Speeches and a dinner service were
part of this affair, which in the early years had included Civil War veterans. The Emancipation Proclamation
of Abraham Lincoln was read aloud and lively music enriched the program.
Besides providing music for religious services, adult and later children’s choirs were formed at Fisk Chapel.
Usually the choir leader was a teacher within the local community. Men who filled this role included
Griffin, Johnson, and Dickerson. Ella Corlies Bailey and Nancy Field Collier were female directors of the
choir for many years during the 1925-1960 period. Mrs. Bailey, who lived to be 100 years old, began serving
her chapel as a teenager playing the church organ.
Special
programs held at Fisk Chapel during the period when the Fisk Street School was operating included the school’s recitals
and graduation ceremonies. Mrs. Collier was Sunday School Superintendent of the New Brunswick district,
and along with Ella Corlies Bailey, filled a variety of roles within the Fisk Chapel organization.
In 1926 the Fisk Street School was destroyed
by fire of a suspicious origin. Effective work by the Fair Haven Volunteer Fire Co., assisted by Rumson,
saved the adjoining parsonage and Fisk Chapel itself. The sixty students of the school met for classes
in the Fisk Chapel parish house, located behind the chapel. A new fireproof schoolhouse opened in 1927,
and for the next 20 years served as a Black school. After desegregation, the schoolhouse became a hall
for public activities called the Youth Center in 1954, and in 1985 was remodeled to also house the Fair Haven Police Department.
By the time the 90th
anniversary of the building was marked in 1972, the church could not really fill the needs of its growing congregation.
A decision was made to build a new, modern church which would have separate classrooms, workrooms, common room, and
offices, in addition to the main chapel.
The end of this historical chapel seemed certain, as its replacement would be built on the same site. A
solution came in June 1974, when Fisk Chapel was then offered to Fair Haven Borough, to be moved to a nearby location and
renovated as an historic site. As a means of guaranteeing the future preservation of the structure, application
was made and approval given for inclusion of Fisk Chapel on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, making it
Fair Haven’s first officially marked historic site.
The chapel was prepared for its removal to its current location on Cedar Avenue during the spring of 1975.
The moving of the chapel required it to be cut into two sections, and the move itself was accomplished with flat bed
trailers.
After its move,
the chapel became officially known as Bicentennial Hall. The Fair Haven Bicentennial Committee, headed
by Chairman Charles H. Gompert, Jr. had requested that the Borough of Fair Haven make the Fisk Chapel preservation effort
Fair Haven’s official project for the celebration of the United States Bicentennial is 1976.
Today the building is used as a meeting facility for a number of social and civic organizations.
Reprinting
Funded by The Historic Association of Fair Haven, Inc.
Reprinted 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004
The
Historic Association of Fair Haven, Inc, consists of citizens interested in the historic and architectural resources of the
Borough.
Condensed from a Research Project prepared by Timothy J. McMahon, April 1991
Retyped
by Melanie Woods, April 13, 2008
