PRINCETON: Church to celebrate 180th anniversary

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   Mt. Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church is due to open its doors this Sunday for morning service, just as it has every year since 1832.
   The congregation, celebrating its 180th anniversary this weekend with a series of events, has been meeting on Witherspoon Street from its earliest days. Though the names and faces have changed, the faithful still continue to come.
   ”The fact that we are still celebrating and worshipping in a place that was around during those times, it means more to our history,” said 35-year church member Frances Craig, a retired school teacher. “I think just to know that we’re still able to be at the same place where some ancestors” were.
   The inside of the sanctuary looks much the same as it did in the 19th century. Members have come to worship and listen to the sermons of pastors Alexander Wayman, Theodore Gould, Jabez Campbell and the other men who led the congregation.
   According to a written history of the congregation, Mt. Pisgah was “organized by Samson Peters, a local preacher of Trenton A.M.E. Church. The first place of worship was in a little frame schoolhouse on Witherspoon Street near the present location.”
   Mt. Pisgah, whose name comes from the mountain where Moses saw the promised land, served as a stop on the underground railroad that helped bring runaway slaves to their freedom, according to the church history.
   A permanent church building was constructed in 1835 on land that cost $75, although the history document says the location cannot be established. The current building opened in 1860.
   ”Usually, in the tradition of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is that you find us in locations where we used to service white people,” said the Rev. Deborah Brooks, the pastor at Mt. Pisgah. “A lot of the members here, they worked for the professors and different aspects of the university. You still find a lot of African-Americans work at the university.”
   It is not entirely clear if Mt. Pisgah is the oldest church in Princeton. For her part, the Rev. Brooks feels it is accurate to call it the community’s oldest black church.
   Ms. Craig said the early 1970s was when the church had its largest membership. She recalled there were “lots of students from Princeton University who would attend.”
   ”I don’t know if they actually joined,” she continued, “but they were here every Sunday, because while they were at college, they came here.”
   Today the church has about 150 members drawn from Princeton and the surrounding area, although attendance on Sundays hovers around 100, the Rev. Brooks said.
   The oldest member, Anne Mitchell, has belonged to the church since 1918. She will be one of the people the church honors this weekend.
   The Rev. Brooks is a sign of the changes at Mt. Pisgah. The Cranford native is the first female pastor in the history of the church, having led the congregation for the past three years.