Building a Community and Cultural Life


Building Communities of Faith

Black residents in the Reservation forged strong ties as they built community spaces amid segregation, including churches, schools, stores, fraternal organizations, and cemeteries. Churches were primary community centers in the Reservation, as in many Black communities in this period. Residents built communities of faith and social networks in three churches in the Reservation: Rising Sun,  St. John, and Little Zion Baptist Churches.

The first was

Rising Sun Baptist Church

which was established shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation and before the end of the Civil War on November 2, 1864. Church records suggest that several members of the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, the First Baptist Church in Hampton, and Mill Creek, met in a log cabin to establish the Rising Sun Baptist Church in the Lackey neighborhood of the Reservation. In a 1991 oral history, Mrs. Beulah Christian Scott recalls that her grandfather, Chelsey Waller, was one of these founding members.

The congregation met in this humble log cabin until 1878 when it was destroyed by fire. Undeterred, the congregation built a brush harbor for their meetings. Later, Noah Engles offered a plot of land to build a new church.  Throughout the years the church was in the Reservation, the congregation was served by Rev. William Harris, Rev. Jacob Baytop, Rev. Walter Williams, Rev. Thomas D. Wright, Rev. L.W. Wales Sr., Rev. E.W. Paige, and Rev. J.H. Smith.

Rising Sun Baptist Church
Courtesy: Navy Mine Depot, Yorktown: Photographs of Buildings, ca. 1919; Box 90; Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Navy), 1799-1950, Record Group 125; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. 

A decade later in 1874, 

St John Baptist Church,

began with a Sunday School organized in Black Swamp Hill in the Reservation. Humphrey Payne served as the first superintendent.

In 1884, the church gained official recognition with Rev. John M. Dawson of the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg serving as pastor. John Roberts Sr., Andrew Randall, Jacob Holmes Sr., John Banks, Thomas Hardy, Isaac Wynne, and James Monroe Lee served as the first deacons.

St. John Baptist Church, ca. 1886. [Photograph]
Courtesy: Mary Lassiter

The entire community joined together to bring St. John to life as a spiritual center. For the price of eight dollars, Mr. John Roberts Sr. and Mrs. Margaret Roberts offered one-half acre of land as a site to build St. John Baptist Church. Listen to Mrs. Redell King and Mrs. Lucille Minkins recall the community working together, including those with trades, such as James Monroe Lee, who felled trees from his land and used his carpentry skills to help erect St. John Baptist Church. 

Descendants Mrs. Redell King, Mrs. Everlean Thompson, and Mrs. Lucille Minkins
Source: Oral History collected by Molly Robinson, April 26, 2022, The Village Initiative Collection.

In this video clip, Dr. Rex Ellis quotes Mr. Alexander Lee describing the communal effort to build St. John Baptist Church, which was erected in 1886:

Courtesy: Dr. Rex Ellis and St. John Baptist Church

According to Deacon Nathaniel Reid, Sr., 

the Little Zion Baptist Church 

began as a branch of St. John Baptist Church in the latter part of the 19th century. Deacon Issac Reed founded the church, which began as an open air meeting. A church building was later erected. Deacon Issac Reed served as the church's leader and lay-reader until his death, then the following pastors served the church while it remained in the Reservation:  Rev. Lemuel Morris, Rev. Whiting, Rev. James Edwards, Rev. George, and Rev. C.A. Banks.

Little Zion Baptist Church
Courtesy: Navy Mine Depot, Yorktown: Photographs of Buildings, ca. 1919; Box 90; Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Navy), 1799-1950, Record Group 125; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. 

Families also shared their privately-owned homesteads in the Reservation for community use. William Moses Lee and his wife Laura Morris Lee, as well as his brother, Humphrey Lee, for example, lived on a 47.7-acre property with their families and contributed part of this land for the Cheesecake Cemetery, a name deriving from Kiskiak, the Indigenous village that was once part of Powhatan's chiefdom and associated with St. John Baptist Church

William Moses Lee and
Laura Morris Lee
Photo Courtesy: Lee Family

Today, headstones mark the burial sites for Fleming Brown, Octavia Hundley, William Hundley, and Emily Williams in the Cheesecake Cemetery. Scroll through these death certificates of community members who were buried in the Cheesecake Cemetery, many of whose graves are unmarked:

Building Bonds Across Church Communities

The Reservation was an expansive area - spanning 11,000 acres - but the three Black churches brought their congregations together for community-wide picnics. For example, on the second Sunday in May, the churches came together for "Oddfellows Turnout Day" where everyone gathered to socialize with friends and relatives and hear the latest news. 

Scroll through these slides to read the recollections of members of the Reservation community, Howard Wallace, Harris Lee Sr., and James Payne:













Black churches in the broader area also collaborated to create a newspaper, Peninsula Churchman, which was “devoted to the intellectual, moral, religious, and industrial development of the race." The newspaper kept residents informed of church news and local happenings, as well as national issues, from scientific breakthroughs to lynchings and mob violence. This 1904 issue of the Peninsula Churchman lists several Reservation residents as agents of the paper: Levi Washington, W.T. Redcross, and John W. Scott, all from the Lackey community in the Reservation.

Source: William & Mary Special Collections Research Center

Although there were some white families living in the Reservation area who may have shared their faith, the churches remained segregated. As Alexander Lee recalled:


“White went to the white church and Black went to the Black church…Nobody thought about integration”


 (as cited in Andes 1993)

Establishing Schools

Families in the Reservation also collaborated to establish schools in their community. There were at least two schools for Black children in the Reservation community, the Lackey School and the Mill Pond School.

Mrs. Mary Washington led the charge to build a schoolhouse in the Lackey area of the Reservation in 1914. The effort caught the attention of Dr. Jackson Davis, the State Supervisor of Negro Education, who recruited Charles E. Brown to lead the school. The community donated labor to construct a four room frame building for classes. In addition, a domestic science room for girls was created by converting an abandoned store, while an adjacent lodge was purchased for use as a manual art shop for boys. Mr. Brown led a staff of five teachers. The school pictured below that was associated with Rising Sun Baptist Church may be part of this school, given its location in the Lackey area of the Reservation.

Charles E. Brown
Source: Naval Weapons Station, Yorktown, employee yearbook
Courtesy: Mary Lassiter

Rising Sun School
Courtesy: Navy Mine Depot, Yorktown: Photographs of Buildings, ca. 1919; Box 90; Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Navy), 1799-1950, Record Group 125; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. 

A news clipping based on Mr. Alexander Lee’s recollections detail community support for schools. The entire community contributed to send Annie B. Brown (later Jones), daughter of Fleming Brown Jr. and Bettie (Hundley) Brown/Taliferro, to Hampton Institute to become a teacher for the community. These recollections may be referencing the Mill Pond School that was located at Charles Corner, about four miles up from Felgates Creek. Mill Pond School was a one-room school offering grades one through six with one teacher. Students walked as far as five miles to attend. The photo below depicts another school that appears to have been attended by Yearda Lee, John and Martha Lee’s daughter and may be the Mill Pond School. 

Clipping from 1988 article by Martha Bell in which Alexander Lee describes a one-room school constructed on the Reservation in 1914

Clipping from 1988 article by Martha Bell in which Alexander Lee describes a one-room school constructed in the Reservation in 1914; Courtesy: The Lee family

Photo of school, possibly Mill Pond School, believed to be on the Reservation

Possibly the Mill Pond School
Courtesy: Mary Lassiter

Here John Allen describes how his grandmother, Lucy Hundley, kept his mother, Cora E. Hundley, at home until her younger sisters, Willie, Eliza, and Aleen, were old enough to attend school. However, the family was committed to education and ensured that Cora completed school and all four siblings continued their education at Virginia State. 

Source: John Allen (2018)

While there were schools in the Reservation, not everyone had access to them. Listen to this excerpt from an oral history with brothers Knox Ratcliffe and Harold Radcliffe. One of the brothers describes working as a waterboy for soldiers during World War I to help support his family and not having the opportunity to go to school.

Source: Knox Ratcliffe and Harold Radcliffe (1984)

Meeting Spaces and Community Organizations

Many residents further helped to establish organizations and communal meeting spaces in which people convened to educate and uplift. Members of the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization that began in 1846 as an antislavery society, constructed a Lodge House in the Reservation in 1916. 

These organizations fostered investment in the local community and reinforced principles of self-reliance.

On the Eve of Dispossession

By the early 20th century, "many of the African American families were

landowners, flourishing entrepreneurs, and skilled artisans

 in spite of economic adversity and instituitonalized racism." In the Reservation, strong collective networks and community-minded visions of success led Reservation residents to flourish and take pride in their accomplishments.

Source: Mahoney (2013:226) 

Source: Fannie Epps (1987:161)

These thriving communities of landowners were precisely what was at stake when the U.S. government commandeered the land in 1918.

Sources: