About John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church
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Welcome to the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church in Oxford, located in Talbot County Maryland. Built on a tiny patch of land outside the waterfront town of Oxford, this unassuming one-room building without a steeple and without indoor plumbing, once served as an important place of worship and gathering for generations of Talbot County African-Americans.
The John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church (JWMC) of Oxford Neck was organized in 1838 and served Oxford Neck, the location of many plantations and many now-forgotten black communities like Mills Town and Screamersville. The historical proximity of Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, and other African American leaders has generated keen interest in abolition and slavery in Oxford and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. This church straddles a unique place in history as the Civil War emerged and slavery came to an end.
Today, the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church attracts local and regional attention because of its unique history in Talbot County. It was an abolitionist and integrated church community in a county which was slave-holding since 1770. Talbot County was at the center of both legal manumission (the freeing of a slave) and Fugitive Slave Act enforcement. The African American community was 50% free and 50% enslaved. And it was the center of Union recruitment of slaves for the U.S. Colored Troops.