The origin of this church, back in the dark days of terror, in 1868, was so unique, so spontaneous, so much after the spirit and form of the New Testament Churches, that we think it worth while to make some record of the same. At that time the colored people were indeed “scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.” Separated from the old church edifices of the white people, they had not yet gathered themselves into their own churches. A Mr. Smith, from Illinois, who had gone through the war as a soldier, and who had settled in mercantile business in Jefferson, Texas, and whose life was soon after sacrificed in the turbulence of those times, came up through Paris lecturing to the colored people. He proposed a church that would accommodate all the Christians, and the result was the organization above named, with a regular constitution and covenant. Its preamble reads thus: “We, the ministers and members of different Christian churches, feeling greatly embarrassed in our former church relations, and regarding those matters of difference which divided the churches to which we have belonged as being unimportant, mischievous in their tendency, and in discordance with the spirit of Christianity, do now, on this 15th day of March, 1868, unite in a new organization, the African Congregational Church. Thankful to God, our gracious and mighty _Redeemer_, for this right and privilege of choosing and adopting our own church forms, ceremonies, and government, and of worshiping God as our conscience dictates, we hereby solemnly pledge ourselves to God and to one another that we will maintain a Scriptural Christian character, and support such laws and regulations founded on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as shall be adopted from time to time by two-thirds of the members of this church.” The Constitution provides in the five articles for the election of “discreet and faithful members” as trustees, deacons, a clerk and treasurer, who shall pay out money only by vote of the church upon an order from the clerk; for the use of either one of the three modes of baptism; and for the choosing of ministers, “who shall preside over all the deliberations of the church;” a Scriptural plurality of preaching elders, a “presbytery” _in_, and not over the church.