Trinity A.M.E. Church

Front: This church was founded soon after the Civil War by 50 freedmen and women who held their first services in a stable donated to them by S.A. Rigby. In 1869 the church trustees bought a half-acre lot for a school, and in 1870 they bought a one-acre lot for “the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Manning” on what is now Rigby Street, named for Rigby. The first church here, a frame building, was completed in 1874. Reverse: The congregation, first called simply “Our Church” by its members, was renamed Trinity A.M.E. Church when its first building was completed in 1874. That building was replaced by a larger frame church, which burned in 1895. The present church, also a frame building, was built that year and covered in brick veneer in 1914. The Central S.C. Conference of the A.M.E. Church was organized here in 1921.