Morristown’s Bethel AME celebrates history, launches program for the future

 By Sharon Sheridan

Chances are, Mary Ann Cobb wasn’t the most popular lady in Morristown when she donated a building near the Green and had it moved to Spring Street so black residents could have a church.

Morris County was very pro-slavery back then, said the Rev. Sidney Williams Jr., current pastor of that church, today called Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Cobb’s husband, George, had been Morristown’s first mayor, a Democratic Congressman and a U.S. Senate hopeful. He also opposed slavery in the days when the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln.

“George Cobb switched over to the Republican  Party, which was a huge thing,” Williams said. “You can imagine that George Cobb was not very popular for his stance on being anti-slavery.”

On Saturday, Bethel will honor Morristown’s current first lady, Mary Dougherty, with an award in memory of the town’s original first lady, Mary Ann Cobb, as part of the church’s 168th-anniversary celebration at 3 p.m. at Frelinghuysen Arboretum.

A dinner dance will follow at 6 p.m. at the Westin Governor Morris Hotel to raise funds for the church’s new Spring Street Community Development Corporation. Donations are $200 per person or $2,000 for a table.

The anniversary celebration concludes with a 10:30 a.m. Sunday service at the church – at the same Spring Street location of Mary Ann Cobb’s first donated house of worship.

Morristown’s first African-American congregation had its roots in the Presbyterian Church on the Green, Williams recounted. In 1841, the church split over slavery, and First Presbyterian continued without African-American members, he said. The congregants who left started the South Street Presbyterian Church, site of First Presbyterian’s current parish house. (The congregations reunited fewer than 20 years after the split, Williams explained.)

Some of the African-American Presbyterians, meanwhile, left to form their own congregation, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They met in a blacksmith shop on the other side of the street from the current Bethel church. They worshiped there from 1843 to 1870, Williams said.

Meanwhile, George and Mary Ann Cobb attended Morristown’s Methodist Church, located in a wooden building at the site of today’s post office.  The mayor was instrumental in getting the stone ediface that replaced it built.

“He wanted them to have a church that rivaled the Presbyterian Church,” Williams said. “That wooden building was subsequently given to us. That’s our connection to Mary Cobb.”

George Cobb died in a train crash in 1870. Four years later, his widow donated the wooden building to the African-American congregation. Their original site was too small and sloped, so they purchased the current Bethel site and relocated the building there. It served as the church’s worship space until a new building was erected in 1971.

Dougherty is being honored as someone very active in the community who exemplifies the spirit of Mary Ann Cobb. “Mary is one who is as comfortable in the Second Ward as she is in the Third,” Williams said. “She visits all the churches. She makes an effort to cross economic and social and racial and ethnic barriers in a very similar way to Mary Cobb.”

Looking to the future, the Spring Street Community Development Corporation, located in the former New Beginnings building beside the church, will offer a variety of resources to the community, Williams said. His wife, Teresa, is executive director of the new nonprofit, which is leasing the building from the town for $1,000 per month.

Thanks to donations of items such as carpeting and furniture and congregants’ time and talents, the building is gradually taking shape with office and classroom spaces. “We want to have a lot of different workshops … for families,” Teresa Williams said.

The building also temporarily is housing the church’s finance office and some storage as Bethel recovers from flooding caused by August’s Hurricane  Irene.

The CDC will be the umbrella for various programs, Teresa Williams said. This includes the church’s HIV/AIDS ministry of education, awareness and financial assistance to affected families, which will be renamed Angels in Action, the pastor said.

Bethel is partnering with Prevention is Key in applying for a $200,000 Family Success Center grant. As a Family Success Center, they would help families set goals and provide resources to achieve them, Pastor Williams said. One target area is helping children scoring partially proficient on state tests. They hope to partner with the school district in this work, he noted.

Another focus area for the Spring Street center will be general advocacy on issues such as creating jobs and affordable housing, he said.

The center welcomes volunteers and donations of educational toys, children’s books, parenting books and child-size furniture. Anyone interested can contact Teresa Williams at teresa.williams@springstreetcdc.org.

For details of this weekend’s events, call 973-267-8912.