n
Waldron took formal charge of Shiloh Baptist Church on the 6th of June
1907 and has labored with success in edifying his congregation and
extending the influence of the church.[34]

While the organization of Shiloh Church was being effected in the
northern section of Washington, there was in the southwest also
another group from Fredericksburg. This effort resulted in the
establishment of the Zion Baptist Church. They first organized a
Sunday and day school in Jackson's School House on Delaware Avenue and
L Street, Southwest. Their next movement was the organization of a
church, September 12, 1864, with nine members. They bought what was
then known as Simpson's Feed Store on the present site of the church,
and remodeled this building in 1867; William J. Walker was its
founder and first pastor. In January, 1869, William Gibbons of
Charlottesville, Virginia, became the pastor and under his temporal
and spiritual oversight the church flourished. The first church
edifice was dedicated in 1871 and for twenty-one years was used by the
congregation. In 1891 the present structure was built at an
expenditure of $35,000. The membership at the forty-eighth anniversary
was 2,310, the largest at the time in the District of Columbia. Up to
the close of the nineteenth century they raised annually on an average
of $8,000 for current expenses. Their present pastor, William J.
Howard, has a unique record as being one of the best known ministers
and men in the city, regardless of denomination, and with a character
beyond reproach.[35]

The Metropolitan, formerly known as the Fourth Baptist Church, was
organized May 1863 by a few holding letters from the Nineteenth Street
Baptist Church during the pastorate of Duke W. Anderson, and by a few
members from other churches. Henry Bailey was the first pastor of the
new group. In 1865 there took place a division of this body which
resulted in the establishment of the Fifth, now the Vermont Avenue
Baptist Church. The organization was effected in a mission building
which stood in the intersection of what is now E Street and Vermont
Avenue. Two contending parties, both claiming to be the Fourth Baptist
Church, were then engaged in presenting their rival claims. Four
church councils were held before it was established which one had the
right to bear the title Fourth. Robert Johnson took charge in 1870,
seven years after the original movement. Under him the establishment
prospered.

Four buildi