“Bethel A.M.E. Church, the first Colored Methodist Church in Philadelphia, established in 1787” in Philadelphia Colored Directory, 1910: A Handbook of the Religious, Social, Political, Professional, Business and Other Activities of the Negroes of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1910
Courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library
Reverend Richard Allen’s parishioners were deeply involved in the response to yellow fever. Work on the congregation’s new building stopped during the epidemic. The church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was not dedicated until one year after the epidemic ended.
