The Courageous Woman Responsible for Starting Capitol Hill Baptist Church

One Humble Woman

Capitol Hill Baptist Church is well known as a leading evangelical church and a home to many great theologians and pastors over the last century. But what most people don’t know is that the church was started by a humble washerwoman named Celestia Ferris.

Celestia Ferris was born in upstate New York in 1844. She moved to Washington, DC as a young girl and grew up in the city during some of the most consequential years in American history. She grew up and came of age during the Civil War. She and her family were members of a prominent Baptist church in Washington, DC that split over slavery. She saw firsthand the devastating effects that the political controversy around secession had on local churches. The war ended as she was coming of age, and shortly after the war ended, she met and married a Union veteran named Abraham Ferris.

Abraham had his own wounds from the war. He was severely injured at a battle where he rescued the life of his captain, almost dying in the process. They moved to the new neighborhood of Capitol Hill, a residential area with cheap housing. And at that time, there was no church—no Baptist church or church of any denomination within a mile’s vicinity.

So they began praying. Just two years into marriage they called together their friends to pray for a Baptist church to be established on Capitol Hill. They kept praying for four years. They prayed, and they prayed, and they prayed. And in 1871 enough people had come together to start a Sunday school. You might ask, Why start a Sunday school before the church has even formed? It’s because they didn’t think about Sunday school like childcare. They viewed it as the front lines of mission as they were trying to share the gospel with local neighborhood children—some whom couldn’t afford to go to school—in hopes of seeing some converted along with their families.

It took eleven years from that first prayer meeting for the church to finally form in 1878. Tragically, Celestia’s husband, Abraham, didn’t live to see that day. He died a year earlier from lingering injuries from the Civil War. And so Celestia was left a widow and single mother to three. She entered the workforce in order to provide for her family, working as a washerwoman at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And though she’s been forgotten to history, she’s remembered as a faithful woman who loved her God, who loved the local church, and who, in many ways in God’s providence is responsible for starting Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

Caleb Morrell is the author of A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism.

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