Zion Baptist Church

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This structure housed the Zion Baptist Church for the first half of the 20th century.

The property was home to a school for local African American students in 1868. This institution was sponsored by the American Missionary Association that hired Jessie Robinson of Harper’s Ferry to be the school’s first teacher. Records indicate 30 students attended classes here that year. In 1870 the public school system was established and Shenandoah County assumed responsibility for the school and a new building was built on the northern end of town.

When Zion Baptist Church moved to the site is a mystery. The 1878 Gray’s Atlas of New Market shows a building on this lot but does not indicate it was used as a church. Ten years later the 1885 Lake’s Atlas shows that Zion Baptist Church was operating there. The church also appears on the 1923 and 1930 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of the town which showed it had stove heat and gas lights, despite the fact the town had been electrified several decades prior. A 1954 article on the town's historically black Asbury Memorial Methodist Church lists it as the only church for African Americans in town, indicating Zion had closed sometime before that. Nothing else is known.

Today the building is home to an office.