Asbury Memorial United Methodist Church

Wilson Burley, one of the members the plaque names, served in a regiment raised in occupied Louisiana. The 84th U.S. Colored Infantry began as the 12th Infantry, Corps d'Afrique, organized at Port Hudson in the fall of 1863 from a corps that had absorbed the Louisiana Native Guards. Renumbered on April 4, 1864, it fought mostly in Louisiana. Its silk flag, now at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, lists Port Hudson, Pleasant Hill, Mansura, Bayou De Glaise and White Ranche, Texas, in May 1865. The regiment mustered out on March 14, 1866.

What the plaque says

Asbury Memorial United Methodist Church IN 1866, FORMER SLAVE WILLIAM BURLEY CAME TO HARRISBURG TO MINISTER TO NEWLY-EMANCIPATED AFRICAN AMERICANS. HE PURCHASED PROPERTY FOR A HOME AND A CHURCH AT THE INTERSECTION OF SYCAMORE AND FENNELL STREETS ALONG THE BANKS OF BRAYS BAYOU. THE CHURCH WAS NAMED THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF HARRISBURG. THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU, A FEDERAL AGENCY DEDICATED TO HELPING FORMER SLAVES, SPONSORED A COMMUNITY SCHOOL ON THE CHURCH GROUNDS UNTIL 1870. THIS EARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL WAS A PREDECESSOR OF A LATE 1800s HARRISBURG SCHOOL. THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY, THE CHURCH SERVED AS A FOCAL POINT FOR THE AREA'S BLACK COMMUNITY. THE LOVING BAND OF HOPE, A GROUP DEDICATED TO ASSISTING HARRISBURG'S AFRICAN-AMERICAN RESIDENTS, OFTEN CONVENED ON CHURCH GROUNDS. THE CONGREGATION MODIFIED ITS NAME SEVERAL TIMES, FIRST CHANGING TO TRINITY METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF HARRISBURG IN 1900 TO DISTINGUISH ITSELF FROM ANOTHER CONGREGATION. IN 1926, WHEN HOUSTON ANNEXED HARRISBURG, THE CHURCH BECAME ASBURY METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, IN HONOR OF NOTED BISHOP FRANCIS ASBURY. IN 1929, THE CHURCH MOVED TO 215 MEDINA STREET AND IN SUBSEQUENT YEARS ADDED ADDITIONAL PROPERTY. ADDITIONAL NAME CHANGES OCCURRED IN 1939 AND IN 1968, WHEN THE INSTITUTION BECAME KNOWN AS ASBURY MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. NOTED MEMBERS INCLUDED SAVANNAH GEORGIA KAY, A CIVIC LEADER WHO MADE SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION IN HARRISBURG; TOM BLUE, WHO WAS A FORMER SLAVE OF SAM HOUSTON'S; AND WILSON BURLEY, WHO SERVED IN THE 84TH U.S. COLORED INFANTRY DURING THE CIVIL WAR. TODAY, ASBURY MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CONTINUES TO SERVE AS A SPIRITUAL LEADER IN HOUSTON. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 5.2 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 6.0 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 6.6 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• Site of General Offices, Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad — steps away
• Holy Cross Mission (Episcopal) — 0.4 mi
• Home of Gen. Sidney Sherman — 0.4 mi
• Glendale Cemetery — 0.5 mi