Asbury United Methodist Church

Asbury began in June 1866 as the first Black church in Holly Springs, one of the earliest freedoms of the formerly enslaved being the right to choose their own church. Twenty-seven members led by the Reverend Moses Adams met in an old house on Gholson Avenue, then in another house on College Avenue the same year. By 1869 there were 443 members, and the first church building went up in 1870; the present one dates from 1915. Hiram Revels, the first Black United States senator, is listed among its members, and the church's basement held Rust's first students.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum — 0.5 mi
  The house in Holly Springs where Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862, now a museum of African American history, art and culture.
• Rust College — 0.6 mi
  The first historically Black college founded in Mississippi, started in 1866 in a Holly Springs church by a formerly enslaved minister and a white Methodist clergyman.
• Sardis Lake and Dam — 32 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

More markers nearby

• Holly Springs — 0.3 mi
• Yellow Fever House — 0.3 mi
• Junior Kimbrough — 0.3 mi
• Mississippi Central R.R. Campaign — 0.3 mi