Two Early Augusta Churches

St. John Methodist Church was founded in 1798 by Stith Mead, a young Virginia minister who denounced the worldliness of fun-loving Augusta. Bishop Francis Asbury visited the church and watched its growth with particular interest. Augustus B. Longstreet and five Methodist Bishops, including James O. Andrew, George F. Pierce, and Warren R. Candler, were pastors of St. John. Lorenzo Dow the colorful and eccentric evangelist, also figured in the early history of the church. In 1844, the original church building constructed in 1801, began a new phase in its ecclesiastical history when it was sold to another early congregation, the Springfield Baptist Church. The structure was moved to the S.E. corner of Reynolds and Marbury - where for approximately 50 years before, members of what is usually considered the first Negro Baptist Church in America at Silver Bluff, South Carolina had worshiped after they fled with their masters to Augusta when the British occupied Silver Bluff in 1778. These Silver Bluff - refugee- charter members of the circa 1790 Springfield Baptist congregation, account for its claim that it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest active Negro Baptist congregation in the United States.