Page:A short account of the rise and progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America.djvu/32

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church. Brother Cook then requested an interview with the Trustees of Zion Church on the subject, and got brother Thomas Ware, an Elder of the white Methodist church in the city, to accompany him at the meeting, which was held at the residence of brother William Brown, Treasurer of Zion Church, in Nassau Street, one door from the corner of (then) Fair (now) Fulton Street, and after considerable consultation on the case, the two aforesaid Elders having obtained the consent of the Trustees, concluded to receive the Asburians into connexion with the Methodist church.

The work of the Lord continued to prosper in Zion Church, and the number of the members, both of the church and of the congregation, so rapidly increased, that the Trustees, viz. William Brown, John Dias, Thomas Jenkins, Charles Tredwell, Tobias Hawkins, Philip Searing, Epiphany Davis, Isaac Benson and George Collins, found their house of worship too small for the increased number of attendants on Divine worship, and being much decayed, they were induced to consult about building a larger and more substantial house, with a school-room underneath, on the site of the old house, and on the 25th day of November, 1818, a committee was appointed to obtain estimates from master builders, in order to understand the cost of the same, and on the 13th of July, 1819, they contracted with Messrs. James Dubois and Thompson Price, to build a house fifty-five feet wide and seventy feet long, of stone, for the sum of eleven thousand five hundred dollars.