The records that burned: Turner Chapel's archive

1849–1979 · A DOCUMENTED LOSS

Some of Fort Wayne's open questions are open because the paper burned. Turner Chapel, the city's first Black congregation, was organized in 1849 — its trustees bought a lot that year on Jefferson Street between Hanna and Francis, though Indiana's Black Laws of 1851 kept them from building for nearly twenty years; in 1869 they bought the former St. John's German Reformed frame church and moved it to land at Wayne and Francis donated by Emerine H. Hamilton; in 1888 they raised the first church building erected by a Black congregation in Fort Wayne; in 1963 they bought the present building, built in 1927 for Calvary United Brethren, at 836 East Jefferson. The congregation kept its own records through all of it — until 1979, when, in the flat entry the Allen County Genealogical Society's church list carries against Turner Chapel's name, "Records were destroyed by fire in 1979." The loss is visible everywhere a question touches the church's own memory. The History Center's account of the congregation opens with an admission: "The name of the African Methodist clergyman who first gathered Fort Wayne's black residents in worship is not known." The pastors of the middle decades, the membership rolls, the congregation's own written account of its first century — these sat in the building that burned, and the Black History section of this record carries the resulting gaps, named as gaps, downstream of this one. The genealogical society's church-records project exists precisely because the pattern is general — "some churches never kept records, some records have been lost or destroyed" — but Turner Chapel's is the loss with a date, a congregation, and a list of questions it left unanswerable. The trail ends in 1979.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, Church List of Allen County and Wayne Township Churches pages — Turner Chapel's record line, "fire 1979," and the records-project note.
2. Tom Castaldi, "Turner Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church," History Center Notes & Queries (first published in Fort Wayne Magazine, February 2008) — the congregation's history and the unknown name of its first gatherer.
3. the Black History section of this history — the congregation in full, with its gaps named.