For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
Matthew 18:20
1820
WELCOME TO PURVIS CHAPEL A.M.E ZION
215 Craven Street
Beaufort, NC 28516
HISTORY OF OUR CHURCH:
Purvis Chapel is known as the town's oldest black congreation. Purvis Chapel actually dates to the mid 1850's when the white Ann Street Methodist church built a new church and gave their old frame building, dating from the 1820's to the black members of the congregation. In 1864, during the Union occupation, the young black congregation at Purvis became one of the first in the state to join the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which it remains today. Up until 1898, blacks had been buried in the northeast corner of the Burying Ground around Purvis Chapel. The varied grave markers in Ocean View provide an excellent source of genealogical information on Beaufort's African Amaerican families. Purvis Chapel, the earliest of these was previously surveyed during the National Register survey of 1970, but is included here because of its symbolic and architectural importance. Build circa 1820 as a plain meeting house for the town's white Methodist congregation. Purvis Chapel was given to the black Methodist in 1854, when the whites completed a new church. Purvis Chapel 's bell was cast in Glasgow, Scotland in 1797. it orginally hung in the north tower, but now resides inside the church
The bulding is listed on the Nation Register of Historic Places and in 1998 the Purvis Chapel was recognized with a second Kathry Cloud Historical Preservation Award. In 1963 ,the bulding was one of Beaufort's first twenty historic buldings to display a plaque.