White men tore down a Baltimore County church over a century ago. Its Black congregation never gave up.

Campfield African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church’s anniversary service in mid-July was marked by green.

Church trustee Alice Greene, 72, bowed her head in prayer as the congregation’s pastor, the Rev. Rowena White, led the Apostles’ Creed from the pulpit. Both women, along with two dozen other Methodist worshippers — decked out in shades of emerald, lime and olive — recited the creed of their Christian faith inside the Pikesville chapel that has housed the congregation since the early 1900s.

They repeated the same words that members of their congregation would have uttered almost two centuries earlier.

But a mystery behind the 182-year-old Baltimore County institution nagged at Greene: On this historic date, no one could say what happened to the Black church’s original building and burial ground.

There were rumors of a tragic history. A 1982 reference book — “A Pictorial History of Pikesville, Maryland” — referred to a 1969 interview with a former trustee who said the original church building was “burned to the ground” by a white land developer known only as “Mr. Cook.”

The rest of the story lies in records buried in the Maryland State Archives, as well as stories passed down from church elders who died years ago.

The inability to track down Campfield AME’s lineage is not uncommon for historic Black churches, especially in Baltimore County, said Betty Stewart, the president of the Diggs-Johnson Museum.

Because illiteracy was much higher at the time, Stewart said, “things didn’t get documented.”

So, what really happened?

According to a review written by Louis Diggs — a chronicler of Baltimore County’s African American history — the congregation started as a log cabin on the corner of Bedford and Campfield roads. Land records show that the church’s original trustees bought the half-acre lot for $25 from the Baltimore Gunpowder Company in 1844.

Greene said church elders told congregants that the original structure was moved to its current location on Walnut Avenue — a short walk from the Milford Mill Metro Station in Lochearn — but they never said why.

Land records and 20th-century court records housed by the Maryland State Archives show that men working for the Villa Nova Company, a land development corporation, broke into Campfield AME and “totally destroyed” the chapel on Aug. 30, 1910.

The company’s owners, J. Glen Cook Sr., J. Glen Cook Jr., Richard W. Cook and Walter H. Cook, “maliciously, unlawfully, forcibly and willfully” threw the church’s trustees out of their own building, stole the congregation’s organ, furniture and records, and also “defaced and desecrated” its graveyard, according to a lawsuit later filed by the congregation.

More than a century later, Greene, teary-eyed, reviewed the records detailing her congregation’s near destruction.

“If you are an African American, there’s certain things about us that’s innate,” she said. “In our history, the whole slavery thing ... the mistreatment as cattle, the mistreatment as human beings.”

A September 1910 article from the Baltimore Afro-American, the weekly Black newspaper, suggests that whoever tore down the church sold the land for $750 and says that the congregation has actually been around since 1828.

Even though, according to a deed recorded in Baltimore County, the church owned the land, a Villa Nova Company plat map shows that the Cooks promised the congregation’s half-acre to a man named John H. Howard and his wife just six weeks after the church was destroyed.

But Campfield AME’s trustees were undeterred. They hired an attorney from Owings Mills, E. Lynne Painter, and sued the Cooks and the Villa Nova Company for $10,000 in February 1911.

A legal battle

The trustees fought the Cook family and its development company in Baltimore County Circuit Court. Painter, the church’s attorney, argued that the corporation owed the Black congregation money for damages and a new lot to rebuild the church.

Meanwhile, the company’s attorneys argued that even if Villa Nova Company had destroyed Campfield AME, its trustees had no legal standing to sue the Cooks.

“They just assumed that we were nothing,” Greene said. “That, you know, that Black folk was ignorant, you know? You didn’t have a brain. You was cattle.”

Two years after the trustees first sued the Villa Nova Company, the case went to trial. But instead of facing a jury of 12 white men, the parties agreed to settle.

In exchange for a deed to the half-acre property, the Cooks were forced to pay the congregation $1,500 ($51,000 in today’s dollars); Painter $300; and the congregation another $400 if the Cooks were unable to provide Campfield AME with a suitable half-acre to replace the original property.

Court records show that it took the company another year to make good on its agreement to pay Campfield AME, including $412 to build the current chapel on Walnut Avenue.

That agreement also allowed the congregation continued access to what remained of the church’s original burial ground. To this day, Greene said, the congregation doesn’t know where the cemetery is.

The one-story, wood-paneled church with a red-carpeted interior sits in the Villa Nova neighborhood, full of suburban homes, cul-de-sacs and white picket fences.

‘It’s got to be told’

Campfield AME’s survival has never been certain.

During her 20-plus years attending the church, Greene — Campfield’s former secretary — recalls former pastors misappropriating money. At other times, membership dwindled to the single digits.

Several years ago, Campfield AME owed so much money in property taxes, Greene said, that the church almost lost the land. “We were so far in the red it was almost burgundy,” she said.

After launching a campaign to raise funds and host a gala for Campfield AME’s 176th anniversary, the congregation’s finances rebounded and members returned, Greene said.

Community has always been the church’s focus, she said. Every year the church holds a back-to-school fundraiser and donates supplies to Pikesville Middle School.

Greene said that understanding Campfield AME’s history better also puts the congregation’s resilience into perspective.

“If you connect with your ancestors, you get this feeling from deep inside ... and come up from your toes,” Greene said. “You get upset about the treatment. You get upset about the way things were done. And you want to make clear and make sure that the story is told right.”

Stewart, 80, president of the Diggs-Johnson Museum, agreed.

“You’re not yelling at anybody, you’re not accusing anybody, you’re just saying, ‘It got to be told. It’s got to be told,’” she said. “No matter what, it’s got to be told.”

The trustees’ successful lawsuit reminds Campfield AME’s current pastor of Richard Allen, an abolitionist who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“We’ve always stood up for ourselves,” White said. “As part of the AME Church, we’ve always been socially aware that we are somebody ... that you can’t push us around.”

She added that the power of any church shouldn’t be measured by its physical building.

“The building is people,” White said. “The people did this.”