As a contractor, Kyle Carter often finds glass bottles and other surprising items at job sites, but his recent find stands out for its historic relevance.
Six months after finding a note nailed to a beam at a historic church in Cape May, locals historians confirmed the paper itself is roughly 130 years old. The handwritten message is from of a Black Civil War-era activist who became a prominent figure in town, the say.
After months of research, the letter was determined last week as being written by Rev. Alexander Heritage Newton, the church’s pastor between 1889 and 1892, said Rachel Dolhanczyk, a local historian who serves as director of history programs for the Center of Community Arts in Cape May.
Newton was a local abolitionist and military member of the 29th Connecticut Volunteers, a Black regiment of soldiers during the Civil War.
The letter, from the year 1891, is dated June 19, which happens to be Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of freed slaves in the U.S. The brief letter notes who worked on plastering the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church and that the fee was $250.
“It could have easily been lost,” said Dolhanczyk.
The note was written on a heavier type of paper, Dolhanczyk said. The historian believes it was nailed to the beam to leave the pastor’s mark on the church, similar to how a carpenter engraves their name on wood.
“It’s exciting,” said Carter, a 38-year-old contractor from Middle Township, who spent the summer renovating the church. “I just find it really interesting because you don’t find one every day.”
The building, at Franklin Street and Osborne Court, is one of several properties a part of an effort to preserve Cape May’s Black history.
A pre-1800s building on Lafayette Street was renovated and turned into the Harriet Tubman Museum. The Franklin Street School, the church’s neighbor and former segregated institution, has reopened as the newest branch of the Cape May County Library.
City officials are preparing the church to become the new home of the East Lynne Theater Company, a performing arts group. The organization, which has been active since 1980, will move from the First Presbyterian Church on Hughes Street to the soon-to-be reopened sanctuary in spring.
“We’ve known about this letter now or a while now,” Mark David Boberick, co-chair of the East Lynne Theater company’s board, said to NJ Advance Media about the discovery. “History is like that onion where you just sort of keep peeling it back, and there’s all these layers. That’s what we’re in the middle of right now.”
Once reopened, the historic Black church, founded in the 1870s will officially be known as the Clemans Theater at Allen AME Church.
In August, the building’s interior was stripped of its interior makeup, revealing the note, which was hidden behind plaster, Carter said. The contractors used a lift to reach the note after finding it attached to a beam on the ceiling. Photos of it were shared with the city, inviting historians to investigate its origins.
The note was resealed under sheetrock, but city officials are weighing whether or not to retrieve it, Boberick said. City officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Boberick hopes it will become a publicly displayed relic whether by itself or still fixed on the beam.
As the theater company, prepares to enter its new space, the organization and local historians are rejoicing over the find, believing it adds value to African American history at the Jersey Cape.
The building is one of a few Black churches in Cape May. Preservation New Jersey, a nonprofit that advocates for neglected sites, included the church on its list of 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2021.
It was vacated after a two-alarm fire started after a car downed a set of utility poles in front of the building, damaging its doorway. It was then purchased by the city.
A lease agreement was reached with the theater company, which will have access to the building for 25 years. Boberick, co-chair of the theater company’s board, said this case isn’t the first where a performing arts group took over an empty church for performances.
The discovery adds to the excitement of repurposing the church for it to continue to be a fixture of Cape May, Boberick said.
“We knew we had something special,” Boberick said, “but we didn’t have any idea exactly how special it was until quite some time later.”
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