Graham City Council Unanimously Names Children's Chapel UCC Historic Landmark

Children's Chapel United Church of Christ, the East Harden Street congregation that has anchored Black religious life in Graham for 150 years, is now an official historic landmark after the city council voted unanimously on March 10, 2026 to grant the designation to the property at 334 East Harden Street.

The vote came after a state-level review and preliminary approval late last year cleared the way for the council to act. In notifying Graham city officials that the church's application had met the criteria for designation, the Office of State Archaeology flagged the site's buried past. Archaeological remains may be "an important component of the significance of the church and cemetery landscape, and those should be considered in any future improvements to the property," wrote Brantley in the agency's notice.

The church's story begins in the turmoil of Reconstruction. The impetus for the church's foundation came from a white pastor named J.W. Wellons, who realized that Providence's Black congregants needed a new place to worship after the Ku Klux Klan demanded race segregation in the religious domain. Wellons established the new congregation in 1875, and a year later he and his flock moved into their first permanent building, a wooden structure built on land donated by William "Bill" Trollinger, a former slave owner.

That original wooden building eventually gave way to a new sanctuary, which opened its doors at 334 East Harden Street in 1911 and has been substantially upgraded since. Children's Chapel marked its 150th anniversary in September 2025, just months before the state review that set the landmark designation in motion.

The church's institutional roots run even deeper than its 1875 founding. Children's Chapel emerged as an offshoot of Providence United Church of Christ, a congregation whose own origins stretch back more than 260 years to the late Colonial period. Since 1875, Children's Chapel "has been a beacon of hope for freed slaves and their descendants, who've managed to keep this storied institution alive long past the demise of Jim Crow segregation."

The historic landmark designation now formally recognizes what generations of Graham residents have long understood: that the building at 334 East Harden Street carries within its walls, and beneath its grounds, a history that reaches from the era of slavery through Jim Crow and into the present.