The congregation of a historic Montgomery County church has been sharing a local synagogue while they navigate legal and funding issues–as well as fate–in their decades-long effort to keep alive the dream of a former enslaved woman.
Every day, thousands of people who travel the Beltway near the River Road exit are passing through lost local history–the almost forgotten town of Gibson Grove.
The marker there is about the only thing that tells you that there ever was a Gibson Grove, since most of it is back behind a fence and obliterated by the Beltway.
But the remnants of a centerpiece of the town remain in the shadow of the thoroughfare that hastened its demise. A centerpiece established by Sara Gibson, who escaped from a Manassas plantation amid the first battle of Bull Run.
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“She felt that it was God that kept her alive,” Judy Bankhead, of the First Agape A.M.E. Zion Church at Gibson Grove, said.
Though at first she was separated from her husband, they were later reunited, and made their way to Montgomery County in Maryland. There they worked for local quakers and earned enough to buy land.
Sara Gibson made a promise to her divinity to “set aside a place where [His] name can be glorified,” Bankhead said.
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The original Gibson Grove church was a log building, put up in 1898. Another one was built on the same site in 1922. That church would outlast the actual town.
“Beltway comes through, split the community. People move away, bam, you know, community destroyed,” the Rev. Edgar Bankead, Sr. said.
But descendants of Gibson Grove have always seen the area as a hallowed hill for what it represents. There were efforts to keep that going: a new congregation and an arduous process of renovation was underway.
Then, a major setback hit on Ash Wednesday in 2004.
The old oil furnace was the source of a blaze that gutted the structure and all the progress toward restoration.
The new church ownership had not been finalized when it burned. What was left of the building languished in legal limbo.
The façade has since been stabilized, and plans for a new church have moved forward, albeit slowly, amid vexing issues.
Among them, "our proximity to the Beltway, our proximity to Seven Locks Road and the topology of this church site,” Edgar Bankead, Jr. said.
And there are historic preservation concerns as well, as plans to widen the Beltway entered the equation.
The latest cost estimate is $3.2 million.
Now with help from the state, Montgomery County and even the Cabin John community, the congregation may finally see its church restored, in memory of a woman who freed herself from bondage and sought to help others.
To learn more about First Agape A.M.E. Zion Church at Gibson Grove and how you can help with its restoration, go to 1stagape.com.
