of the Lincoln Memorial Temple
Congregational Church, on the northeast corner of 11th and R Streets,
Northwest. This church was organized in the parlor of F. S. Presbrey,
publisher of _Public Opinion_, January 10, 1887, with Rev. S. P. Smith
as its first pastor. Lincoln Temple is the outgrowth of the Colfax
Industrial Mission founded by members of the First Congregational
Church, prominent among whom was John W. Alvord. It later became the
Lincoln Mission. In addition to the Sunday School feature should be
mentioned the industrial work, as classes in domestic science and
domestic art were conducted there. For a time this mission constituted
the first church home for Negro girls in the country. Among its
founders were R. S. Smith, William H. Jackson, Theodore Clark and
wife, Otwina Smith, Miss Booker, Hiram Ball, a Mrs. Jackson of Chicago
and a Mr. Shorter. The Lincoln Mission Sunday School, with an
attendance running at times to 700 and more, was a part of the work of
the charitable organizations of the North engaged in missions and
education in the South among the freedmen. As such it was one of the
institutions of the city in Sabbath School work, with music especially
popular. This school enjoyed the fostering care of the American
Missionary Association, which appointed a minister to conduct
religious services and a woman to work in the homes of the people. The
teachers of the Sunday School were of both races. The whites were
drawn from the First Congregational Church and Negroes were mainly
students from Howard University.

During the operation of these two instrumentalities, the thought that
the work of the school could be made more effectual and permanent by
the organization of a church first took tangible form in the years of
Mr. Smith's ministrations, and the church grew steadily and surely.
Rev. George W. Moore became pastor on June 1, 1883. His work was a
thorough success, due in no small measure to the personality of his
wife, Ella Sheppard Moore, who had been pianist of the Fisk Jubilee
Singers and with them had circled the globe. Dr. Moore resigned in
1893. Subsequent pastors have been Rev. Eugene Johnson, A. P. Miller
and Sterling N. Brown. Dr. Brown was followed by Rev. Emory B. Smith,
an enterprising young man who has brought the church to the very
foremost in all the activities of religious work.[43]

The Plymouth Congregational Church was the direct outcome of
dissatisfaction of many members of Union