How Celestia Ferris’s Prayerful Initiative Helped Found a Church on Capitol Hill

A Sunday School Started

By the time Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, Celestia Anne Hunt was two weeks from turning twenty-one. As Union troops repopulated the war-weary capitol city, one man caught her attention as they attended services at E Street Baptist Church: a handsome corporal from New Jersey named Abraham Ferris.

As a soldier in Company K of the Seventh New Jersey in the Army of the Potomac, Ferris witnessed the worst of the war, including the Peninsula Campaign and the Battle of Gettysburg.¹

Ferris began attending services at E Street Baptist Church after an injury forced him to transfer to the Veteran Reserve Corps. Not long after, he was converted and, on July 29, 1866, was baptized into membership of E Street Baptist Church.² Less than a year later, on April 23, 1867, Abraham and Celestia were wed.³ Soon after settling into their home at 214 A Street NE, the Ferrises called their friends together on a crisp November night in 1867 to pray for a Baptist church to be established on Capitol Hill.

Although Celestia Ferris and her band of friends did not know all the difficulties facing the Baptists of Washington, they prayed to an all-knowing God who did. And as they prayed, he answered—in ways that will only be fully comprehended in eternity. For four years, they continued to pray, until by 1871 their group had grown large enough to open a Sunday school on Capitol Hill. They called it the Capitol Hill Baptist Sunday School. Each Sunday afternoon, the Ferrises, Murrays, Spoffords, and Skirvings sang hymns, read the Bible, and memorized Scripture with neighborhood children. They did not have their own building yet, so they rented a one-story, wooden school building at the corner of Seventh and A Streets NE.⁴

In the nineteenth century, Sunday schools did not exist to provide childcare during services but to evangelize and catechize those who would not otherwise be afforded religious upbringing. Many of the children attending the “Sabbath school” worked during the week and lacked elementary education. Many could not even read. They were the children of immigrants, freed slaves, or poor Whites who lived in squalid conditions, “Alley Dwellings,” as they were known, often with one leaky latrine servicing up to thirty families.⁵

Sunday school workers like Celestia Ferris went to such decrepit places to, in their words, “compel the people to come in that the Lord’s house might be filled.”⁶ They hoped to provide children with educational opportunities and religious instruction not otherwise available at home. They hoped to divert children from the sin of “Sabbath-breaking” which, in their minds, would taint the city and the nation.⁷ But most of all, they hoped and prayed that the seeds sown into the hearts of these young people would eventually yield fervent and faithful church members.⁸ As Francis McLean would later recall in 1891, “Thus from the starting point, step by step, have all these interests grown, and all are indebted to the Sunday-school.”⁹

The work was an instant success. By 1874, the Sunday school workers were ready to purchase property and formally incorporate as an association, which they called the Metropolitan Baptist Association. In their constitution, adopted on June 12, 1874, the forty-four members stated that their aim was the “organization and establishment of a Baptist Church in the Eastern section of the city.”¹⁰ Their progress toward that goal took a significant step forward with the purchase of a vacant plot of land at the corner of Sixth and A Street NE on November 7, 1874.¹¹ The trustees chose the lot because it was one of the highest points of elevation on Capitol Hill.¹²

With property in hand, the association began constructing a oneroom, brick Sunday school building. To keep the cost low, they agreed to provide the materials themselves. Celestia Ferris even suggested that each child bring any bricks they could find to the construction site. Enthused by her instructions and no doubt eager to please their teacher, two of the girls visited a brickyard in the southeast section of the city and asked for a few bricks. When the owner of the brickyard asked their reason, they explained that they were helping to build a church and that their Sunday school teacher had instructed them to collect bricks. Impressed by their importunity, the owner promised to see what he could do.

In short order, a large stack of brand-new bricks appeared on the church property, courtesy of the brickyard owner. Encouraged by their success, the two girls proceeded to visit two other brickyards, telling them what the first man had done. As a result, two more loads of bricks appeared overnight at the corner of Sixth and A Street NE, one from each of the brickyard owners.

Through the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the children, the only bricks purchased for the erection of the building were the ones used on the front of the building. The rest were collected by children. As Celestia Ferris and others had prayed for the Sunday school children to become “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5), the very bricks through which the chapel was constructed were the result of prayer.¹³

On February 6, 1876, nine years after their first prayer meeting, the new chapel was dedicated.¹⁴ The trustees congratulated the association on the completion of the chapel, writing that “there is every encouragement to go forward in the good work for which it was organized.”¹⁵ With an association formed, property acquired, and a building erected, Celestia Ferris and her band of friends were finally ready to begin holding Sunday services on Capitol Hill.

The earliest known photograph of Metropolitan Baptist Church’s first building, built in 1876 and demolished in 1911 to construct the present building.

A Church Formed

Between 1876 and 1878, the Metropolitan Baptist Association began hosting a weekly prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings and, soon after that, a Sunday evening prayer service.¹⁶ At last the Baptists of Capitol Hill felt ready: they had a suitable building, manageable debt, and favorable prospects for growth. But they still needed the financial support and the encouragement of other Baptist churches in Washington.

Financial support proved exceptionally difficult to acquire. In 1878 the United States was in its fifth year of an economic recession. The “Panic of 1873” had settled into the “Long Depression,” with unemployment peaking in 1878 at an estimated rate of over 10 percent.¹⁷ For many DC churches, it was difficult enough to maintain their own churches, much less contribute to a new one. Thus, the revered Baptist statesman and deacon at E Street, Andrew Rothwell, argued that the organization of a Baptist church on Capitol Hill should be delayed to “a not distant future day” when “they have cleared their property from debt.”¹⁸

When a group of representatives from Capitol Hill met with Calvary Baptist and E Street on January 3, 1878, most of the questions revolved around “financial prospects and numerical strength.”¹⁹ Even beyond contributing to the work financially, Calvary and E Street knew that by encouraging the formation of this new church, they would be losing members who would be diverting their time, attention, and resources elsewhere.

Despite the recession, everyone chipped in to help get the work off the ground. Former rivals—like Calvary and E Street—locked arms together to plant a church on Capitol Hill. Calvary Baptist Church gave $200, Second Baptist $100, and E Street $75. Joseph Parker contributed $25 of his personal funds toward the new venture, and Calvary Baptist also donated old hymn books.²⁰

Finally, on February 4, 1878, a group of pastors and representatives of the Baptist churches of Washington, DC, convened at the small brick chapel on Capitol Hill to discuss the prospect of giving recognition to a new church. The chair called the meeting to order by asking those gathered to open Philip Bliss and Ira Sankey’s Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs²¹ to sing Emily S. Oakey’s hymn, “What Shall the Harvest Be?”²²

The pastors and delegates reminded each other of the common mission and purpose that had brought them together that evening. Despite the years of infighting, the church splits, and the war that had rent the nation apart, they were still united by one Spirit in a common mission: gospel sowing and harvest gathering.

That evening the Baptists of Washington came together to lend their support for the first time since the war to establishing a new church in the nation’s capital. By passing the following resolution, these once alienated churches were doing more than planting a church. They were planting a flag for Christ in the very heart of the nation:

Resolved, That we tender to the brethren and sisters composing the Metropolitan Association an expression of our fraternal sympathy in their efforts to establish a Gospel church in this section of the city; and reposing confidence in their discretion, wisdom and piety, we recommit to them the matter of organizing said church and the time such organization shall be made.²³

The jubilant Baptists of Capitol Hill wasted no time in communicating the good news to the rest of their band, urging all interested parties to bring “their letters” to a meeting to be held on Sunday February 27, 1878, where they would formally covenant as a church.²⁴

At long last, the church was born. On Sunday, February 27, 1878, at 7:30 p.m., dozens gathered in the chapel at the corner of Sixth and A to covenant together and form the Metropolitan Baptist Church.²⁵ After a reading of Scripture and prayer, the business began. Letters from various Baptist churches were read one by one, indicating the name and city of the church each person was coming from, as well as the date of the letter. The plurality of letters came from Second Baptist Church in Navy Yard (thirteen in total).²⁶ Ten came from E Street Baptist Church.²⁷ Also represented were members joining from Calvary Baptist Church and First Baptist Church, with the four remaining constituent members joining from churches outside of the District.²⁸

After the reading of the letters, the members rose to covenant with each other before the Lord:

Having been led, as we believe, by the Spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we do now, in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully enter into covenant with one another, as one body in Christ.²⁹

Prayer was then offered, and all united in singing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”³⁰ As they sang to one another, they knew they were making a promise— a covenant. They knew they lacked the ability to keep that covenant by their own power, so they prayed, asking God for grace and aid in time of need.

Tragically, Celestia’s husband Abraham did not live to see that day. He died less than a year before, on July 28, 1877, at the age of fortyfour from lingering Civil War wounds. He was buried in Arlington Cemetery, leaving her as a thirty-three-year-old widow and mother of three young children.

The name Celestia Ferris only appears occasionally in the minutes of the church, of which she remained a faithful member until her death on December 1, 1924, at age eighty.³¹ She lived what George Eliot has called “a hidden life,” spending her days performing “unhistoric acts” and being buried in an unvisited tomb in Arlington.³² Her name, however, has not been forgotten, and her legacy continues in the lives impacted through the ministry of the church she started.

The band of friends had come a long way since that first night of prayer in 1867. Without prayer, what would have happened? Would it have lasted? Would it still be bearing fruit today, apart from the prayerful initiative of twenty-three-year-old Celestia Ferris? Prayer had birthed a Sunday school, which had grown into a church. But they still had a long way to go to become a beacon of light on the Hill. Their greatest and most pressing need was for a regular pastor. And for that, the hopes of the happy band lay once again in the hands of the inestimable Joseph W. Parker.

This article is adapted from A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism by Caleb Morell.

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