Let the Oppressed Go Free

Despite Methodism's relatively enlightened stance against slavery and the Wesleyan theology of free and full of grace for all humankind, the congregation was segregated.  Blacks were regulated to a crowded balcony in the Montgomery Street Church (now Dumbarton UMC), which they shared with the choir.

It appears that as early as 1812 events were leading toward the establishment of Mount Zion Church.  On January 12, 1813, the trustees of the Montgomery Street Church purchased a lot that extended between [26th and 27th Streets] just south of [P Street] from William Morgan for $200.  The deed stated that the land was "for the use and benefit of the Methodist Episcopal Church and for no other use." 66  About 125 members of the Georgetown church, lead by Polly Hill, William Crusor, William Trumwell, Shadrack Nugent, Thomas Mason, and Tamar Green, formed a separate congregation, although they knew they would remain under the supervision of the white church.67

Mt. Zion's impact on the African American community of Georgetown increased steadily.  Clearly, the presence of a congregation minimally supervised by whites were blacks could express themselves, worship in their own style, and minister to each other held great appeal.  Membership statistics illustrate Mount Zion's impact.  After 1816, the congregation grew steadily , from 417 members that year to 850 members in 1838.  The presence of Mount Zion influenced the entire black community in the town.  In 1801 the first year for which Methodist membership statistics are available, only two percent of all black Georgetowners were Methodists.  By 1920, when Mount Zion was well established, twelve percent of the town's African-American  population belonged to that church.  By 1840, the number had grown to nearly twenty percent."
( Chapter 6: Let the Oppressed Go Free, pages 104-105, by Jane Donovan.)

Will the Border Hold?

"It is peculiarly fitting that the Wheatly window should carry in its topmost panel the symbol of a sword-pierced heart, for its reminds onlookers of the prophet Simeon's words to Mary, after taking in his arms the infant Jesus : "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."1  Francis and Caroline Wheatly lost their son, the one named for his father, only a few days short of his twenty-second birthday, and fifteen days after he was wounded at Raccoon Field while fighting in the Confederate army, on October 11, 1863." ( Chapter 10: Will the Border Hold?, page 189, by Graeme Donovan.)

Dumbarton's transformation into a hospital in 1862 was abrupt.  "The first warning of imminent crisis came when anyone sniffing the freshening southwest winds on Saturday, August 30, smelled the acrid odor of gunpowder, or heard the muffled reverberations of heavy cannonades from the direction of Bull Run."52  Over subsequent days, as thousands of wounded from the battle poured into Washington in makeshift ambulances, the Surgeon General's office commandeered Georgetown College, the Union Hotel, George Waters' warehouse, and several churches in Georgetown, among them Dumbarton, to be prepared as emergency hospitals for the reception of the wounded.  In two days at Bull Run, the Union suffered 14,462 causalities and the Confederacy 9,474.  A little more than two weeks later, the bloodiest one-day encounter of the entire war (and indeed of any U.S. war, before or since) took place at Antietam.  Dumbarton took in wounded soldiers from Bull Run, Antietam, and later from Fredericksburg where in mid-December 1862, there were a further 18,000 causalities."54 ( Chapter 10: Will the Border Hold?, page 204-105, by Graeme Donovan.)

During the war, President Lincoln visited the church; his pew now bears the inscription, "The Pastor."