Fugitive Slave Chapel London
In 1848, the African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation in London, Canada West, built a small frame church at 275 Thames Street. Part of the expanding Canada circuit, the London congregation became a British Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856. It was part of a network of churches that shaped antislavery thought and action in nineteenth-century Canada, and was a central institution in London’s black community. In the spring of 2013, the “Fugitive Slave Chapel Preservation Project” formed to save the historic structure from demolition. Members of our class were there in November, 2014, when the structure was moved from Thames Street to its new home beside the historic Beth Emmanuel Church, Grey Street. Video footage of the move can be viewed on the FSCPP site. Information about the archaeological work at the site is available at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology website. More photographs of the move and images from the FSCPP March 2015 Open House are found in our Gallery.
https://soundcloud.com/huronanti-slaveryresearch/delta-mcneish-interviewmp3