Corner Churches

The land occupied by the Old Burying Ground is bounded by Ann Street to the south (where the main gate is located), Broad Street to the north, Turner Street to the west and Craven Street to the east (see map below).

Churches

Remarkably, there’s a church located on each corner of this block. Two of the corner churches are historic buildings from the 1800s.

The oldest of these, located on the corner of Craven and Broad Streets, is Purvis Chapel, (above) home of the AME Zion congregation. The structure was built almost two hundred years ago (around 1820) by Methodists, who later deeded the building to the black Methodists, as they replaced it with a newer structure.

Built in 1854, Ann Street United Methodist Church (above)stands on the corner of Craven and Ann Streets.

On the corner of Ann and Turner Streets is the First Baptist Church, a solid brick structure, built in 1953, occupying the site of the original Baptist structure that originally stood here. The Baptist Education Building is beside the Old Burying Ground.

One Harbor Church (above) now occupies the structure on the corner of Turner and Broad Streets. Although it’s not adjacent to the cemetery, there are a couple of other properties lying on the north side of the Old Burying Ground, separated by a chain-link fence.

Next door to One Harbor Church is the pre-Civil War building known as the “Odd Fellows Lodge,” (above) and the church’s outreach center now occupies the historic Masonic Lodge building (below), also on Turner Street.

This block of land in the center of town seems to have been originally regarded as “sacred ground” in the 1720’s when burials began. A place that was consecrated and intended for religious use and to honor the town’s dead, it was regarded at the time with reverence, awe, and respect.

Newer structures were added more recently. Besides church administration and education buildings, other buildings, civic in nature, were added on Broad Street and Turner Street. They are being used for county administration offices, due to the proximity of the Carteret County Courthouse, located on the block north of Broad Street.