The church was a stop on the Greenwich Line of the Underground Railroad through South Jersey operated by Harriet Tubman for 10 years.

The church and cemetery were part of the early 19th-century free negro settlement sponsored by Quakers known as Small Gloucester.

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.

In 1738, the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania united and submitted an agreement to the Society of Friends which recommended to discontinue the use of Africans as slaves.

The church and cemetery were part of the early 19th-century free negro settlement known as Small Gloucester supported by local Quakers including the Van Leer family.

A secret three-by-four foot trap door in the vestibule of the church was used[5] to access a crawlspace to hide runaway slaves.