The Historic Bethlehem Baptist Church Of Flagville, Louisiana

Two pastorates carry most of this church's history. Rev. Westley Gross served from 1880 to 1917, and Rev. Sidney H. Davis from 1927 to 1984, fifty-seven years. The Revs. Tom Peterson and Charles Thornton of New Orleans organized the congregation in 1865, and Alfred D. Willis served as its first full-time pastor until 1880. Membership once dwindled to six. The church built in 2001 cost $280,000 and took eight months, and the congregation met at True Vine Baptist Church on Courthouse Lane meanwhile. A model of the original church, donated by Kermit Dufour, is on display.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Destrehan Plantation — 2.7 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Whitney Plantation — 16 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 19 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 20 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.

More markers nearby

• Flagville — steps away
• Fashion Plantation — 0.4 mi
• Home Place — 0.6 mi
• Settlement Of The German Coast — 1.3 mi