A Story of Faith and Freedom
Founded in December 1856 in the Ironton home of Henry and Rebecca Harvey, the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Ironton—now Quinn Chapel—quickly became a cornerstone of both spiritual life and resistance to slavery in southeastern Ohio. Situated near the Ohio River, the church emerged in a region known as the Hanging Rock Iron District, which spanned the Ohio-Kentucky border and became a critical corridor for Underground Railroad activity.
The church’s founders, including Gabe and Retta Johnson and the Harvey family, worked tirelessly to support freedom seekers, embodying the AME Church’s theology of liberation through faith and action. The African Methodist Episcopal Church emphasized salvation through liberation, and its members believed that Christian duty demanded active resistance to enslavement. As such, they built a congregation that not only ministered to the soul but also defended the liberty of the oppressed.
As documented in interviews from the Wilbur H. Siebert Underground Railroad Collection, Ironton’s African American Methodists were part of a well-organized interracial and interfaith network that moved freedom seekers from the river towns of Ironton, Burlington, and Proctorville to free African American settlements farther inland such as Poke Patch in Gallia County and Berlin Crossroads in Jackson County.
One of the most compelling stories illustrating the vital role of Quinn Chapel’s network is that of Asbury Parker, a freedom seeker born enslaved in what is now Cabell County, West Virginia. In 1857, Parker escaped from Clinton Furnace in what is now Boyd County, Kentucky. “I had almost fell out with God for making me a slave,” Parker later recalled. After James Buchanan’s election in 1856, he saw little hope for legal emancipation and resolved, “by the end of another year, no white man would be collecting my wages.”
That Spring, Parker crossed the Ohio River and made his way to Ironton. There, he encountered Gabe Johnson, a barber by trade, who took him to the home of Perlina Pogue, another member of Quinn Chapel. Pogue’s daughter, Hannah, would later become Parker’s wife. From the Pogue home, Asbury was introduced to Ironton AME’s network of stations and conductors.
Two Quinn Chapel-connected conductors, Dan Holt and Nat Salisbury, helped Parker travel overnight to Olive Furnace. He was dressed in black broadcloth, disguising himself as a free man. Upon arrival, James Cradolph, an older African American conductor, advised him to “act free” and led him to Poke Patch. Parker would eventually reach Canada and freedom, later returning to Ironton with his family after the Civil War. His escape, facilitated by Quinn Chapel’s earliest members, illustrates the church’s deep commitment to justice and liberation.
Other accounts confirm the congregation’s role. In a dramatic 1861 episode, two men fleeing enslavement were hidden first by Henry and Rebecca Harvey and then by Gabe and Retta Johnson. When a mob demanded their surrender, Gabe Johnson stood firm: “I told ’em they couldn’t come in… no blood hound should come in… only over my dead body.” Retta Johnson stood beside him, armed with a hatchet. Their defiance enabled the men’s safe escape to Poke Patch days later.
The congregation’s contributions are memorialized in the stained-glass windows of Quinn Chapel, which honor Gabe and Retta Johnson and others. These windows stand as visual reminders of the moral and physical courage demonstrated by Ironton’s AME community and their contributions to the nation’s larger abolition and civil rights movement.
Quinn Chapel (built in 1908) still stands today, on the same lot upon which the original AME house of worship was built. It is a living legacy to the bravery and faith of its founders. The stories of Asbury Parker, Gabe and Retta Johnson, and Henry and Rebecca Harvey document not only acts of individual heroism but also a shared vision of liberation that defined Quinn Chapel’s role in the Underground Railroad. Their collective actions transformed Ironton into a place of refuge and hope, an initial stop on Appalachia Ohio’s network to freedom.
