Twenty-five years later the title to the property was transferred to the African-American trustees of the Stone Street Baptist Church.

In 1859, after descendants of the Clotilda settled in Africatown, they also joined in with members of Stone Street Baptist Church.

These descendants had ancestral roots in Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, and the Kingdom of Whydah, Dahomey, located in present-day Benin.

In 1864, Reverend Benjamin Franklin Burke of Richmond, Virginia, became pastor and led the congregation for 38 years, until his death on September 27, 1902.

Reverend K. D. Watkins, who pastored from 1907 to 1915, rebuilt Stone Street Baptist Church in 1909.