176 West Market Street
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Last updated on March 25, 2024
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The Otterbein Methodist Church and its surrounding parking lots are part of what was once Jail Hill. Jail Hill was a historic free African American community in Harrisonburg established before the Civil War and existed into the 1870s. In the 1830s, freedmen William Strother and Willis Bundy purchased land on the city’s western side. Locals named it Jail Hill after the old city jail that resided there. Over decades, more free people of color purchased land in the area and established a community of African American property owners. The number of Black property owners decreased due to the onset of the Civil War, but the neighborhood remained predominately Black. In 1866, the community formed the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church. In the latter half of the century, the population of Jail Hill began to decline from the negative impacts of new city planning and the demolition of buildings. The John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harrisonburg with its members.
There are no pictures of Jail Hill. Artist Emma Lyon Bryan captures a small image of Jail Hill in her 1837 painting of Harrisonburg. In her work, we can see the old jailhouses that served as apartment buildings with two chimneys and several freedmen standing in the doorways and alongside the house.
Jail Hill provides a reminder of how African Americans sought to create spaces and opportunities for themselves in the South in the years preceding and following the Civil War. Working against a legal structure and society that provided little, if any, room for their existence, Jail Hill emerges as a shining example of African American success in Antebellum Harrisonburg.
There are no pictures of Jail Hill. Artist Emma Lyon Bryan captures a small image of Jail Hill in her 1837 painting of Harrisonburg. In her work, we can see the old jailhouses that served as apartment buildings with two chimneys and several freedmen standing in the doorways and alongside the house.
Jail Hill provides a reminder of how African Americans sought to create spaces and opportunities for themselves in the South in the years preceding and following the Civil War. Working against a legal structure and society that provided little, if any, room for their existence, Jail Hill emerges as a shining example of African American success in Antebellum Harrisonburg.
