Author: Dorris Keeven-Franke
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In 2023, the historic cemetery was listed on the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom because of the burial location of Smith Ball, Martin Boyd and Benjamin Oglesby, all freedom seekers that would flee their enslavers. They would return home after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War and purchase…
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On September 23, 1871, Benjamin Oglesby’s son-in-law Jackson Luckett, along with Nathaniel Abington, Austin “Oss” Pringle, his son-in-law Smith Ball, David Bird, Thomas McClean, Mark Robinson, Claiborne Richards, and Martin Boyd became Trustees for the newly established Smith Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church
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In 1871, one of the proudest moments for the Trustee’s of the Smith Chapel A.M.E. Church was to build a schoolhouse for their children, grandchildren and all future generations. This was a generation that it had been against the law written in 1847, for them to even learn how to read or write. They proudly…
