Founding of the Congregation (1848)

Reedy Chapel's congregation was organized in 1848, more than a decade before emancipation, when Galveston's enslaved and free Black community began meeting for worship under the oversight of white Methodist clergy, as was required under Texas law at the time. Despite those restrictions, the congregation built a durable community identity that would allow it to reorganize as a fully independent Black church the moment legal conditions allowed after the Civil War.