hodist Episcopal
church. At first they worshipped in Basil Sim's Rope-walk, First
Street east, near Pennsylvania Avenue, but subsequently in Rev. Mr.
Wheat's school-house on Capitol Hill, near Virginia Avenue. They
finally purchased the old First Presbyterian Church at the foot of
Capitol Hill, later known as the Israel Bethel Colored Methodist
Episcopal Church. Some years thereafter other members of the old
Ebenezer Church, not liking their confined quarters in the gallery,
and otherwise discontented, purchased a lot on the corner of C Street
south and Fifth Street east, built a house of worship, and organized
the "Little Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church."[2]

About the year 1825 a third colonization from the original Ebenezer
Church took place. One grievance among others was that the Negro
members were dissatisfied with their white pastors because they
declined to take the Negro children into their arms when administering
the rites of baptism. In 1839 this alienation developed into an open
rupture, when thirteen class leaders and one exhorter left the mother
church, and, after purchasing a lot on the Island, erected a house and
formed a Negro church, independent of the Methodist Episcopal body,
under the name of the Wesley Zion Church, and employed a Negro
preacher. Among the prominent men in this separation were Enoch
Ambush, the well-known schoolmaster, and Anthony Bowen, who for many
years was an estimable employee in the Department of the Interior.[3]
Mr. Bowen served as a local preacher for forty years, and under his
guidance St. Paul's Negro Church on the Island was organized, at first
worshipping in E Street Chapel."[3a]

The white Methodists of Georgetown elbowed their Negro membership out
of their meeting house, but for fourteen years, that is, until 1830,
they kept no written church records except a list of this one sold to
Georgia, another to Carolina, a third to Louisiana, and others to
different parts--annals befitting the time and place, and a
searchlight on conditions then prevailing at the National Capitol and
elsewhere south of the Mason and Dixon line. In 1830 the membership
was large and much spirituality was manifested. White ministers of
more than local note were anxious to serve these people. At the
instance of one of them, Mr. Roszel, the church was first called Mount
Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, because it was located on a hill. The
feasibility of having Negro ministers to preside over