Reaves Chapel AME Church Open House

Celebrate the restoration of this historic African American Church, cohosted by the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation. It is one of the Cape Fear region’s most culturally and historically significant African American structures. People who were formerly enslaved built Reaves Chapel on the bluffs of the Cape Fear River shortly before or just after the Civil War. Around 1911 it was moved inland by the congregation, using logs and a team of oxen to its current location. The land where they placed the chapel was owned by Edward Reaves, a man formerly enslaved at the Cedar Hill Plantation, and for whom the Chapel was named. Many of Navassa residents’ ancestors were Gullah Geechee peoples of coastal Africa.