It is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation in New Jersey and one of the last buildings standing where Richard Allen is known to have preached.

The church and community were a stop on the Greenwich Line of the Underground Railroad through South Jersey operated by Harriet Tubman for ten years.

The church and its members provided shelter and support for fugitive slaves fleeing Maryland and Delaware for free states in the north and Canada.

[4] In the 17th century, Swedish, Dutch and English settlers brought slaves to South Jersey to perform the manual labor needed to establish their colonies.

Many of the English settlers that founded the West Jersey colony were Quaker and began to debate the morality of owning human beings.

[4] The church in Othello, New Jersey, burned down in an arson incident in the late 1830s[6] and services were held in a nearby Hicksite Quaker meetinghouse until the current structure was built sometime between 1838 and 1841.

[4] During the American Civil War, several members of the church enlisted and served in the United States Colored Troops regiment.