The First African Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia (now Alfred Street Baptist Church), established in 1818, is the oldest African American congregation in the city. It has long been a mission of the (white) First Baptist Church. Two years prior to the present, the church’s first “‘bona fida’ Negro minister/pastor” assumed the pulpit. Then came…
Virginia voters (all men, and many of whom are Baptist) today ratify the Ordinance of Secession adopted by the Virginia Convention on April 17. Voters also amend the state constitution to remove a ceiling on the value of enslaved blacks for taxation purposes. Yet the state is divided on secession, as voters in the western…
Upon graduating from Richmond College, John Walker Hundley joins the 26th Virginia Infantry as a second lieutenant, under the command of his uncle, Capt. Napoleon B. Street. A King and Queen County, Virginia native born in 1841, Hundley had a difficult childhood, his mother dying two years after his birth. College had opened a world…