Mt. Laurel African Methodist Episcopal Church
Yorktown, Pittsgrove Township, Salem County
Allen Drive
founded 1872, built c.1870
Jaquett provides no information other than that the cornerstone reads that it was founded in 1872, which also serves as an approximate date for its erection. The entrance and the extension to the rear are new. This is a simple three-bay frame meetinghouse of a style common to Methodist and African Methodist congregations throughout the southern half of the state. Barry Caselli noted that the cornerstone reads "Purchased 1934," which suggests another congregation erected the building.
It is worth noting that few of the black congregations are mentioned by name in Cushing, although he does remark that the blacks have their own churches, "mostly of the Methodistical denomination."[sic] Cushing(1883) writes in one place that Yorketown has a chapel and a colored Methodist church, and in another he notes there is a Baptist chapel, erected in 1870, and a "Mt. Olive [Methodist] church—a small frame building erected by the colored people for whom the travel to Salem was too far." This might have been either one.
It is interesting to note that the location is Allen Drive, presumably for Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.