The Allen Chapel African American Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Lincoln is on the Landmarks Illinois 2025 list of most endangered historic sites in the state. The church has a storied history from the formation of a congregation in 1868 to the construction of a building in 1881 until the chapel’s closure in 2012. The church became the center of Lincoln’s African American community where many came for religious services and social events.
The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has connections to many notable people.
Ron Keller, a former history professor at Lincoln College, said he is the unofficial caretaker. “With my interest in history, I just gravitated to helping out. The building is worth saving. When many in the congregation either moved away or died, the church had to close. With the Landmarks designation, hopefully we will be able to find ways to save this historic site,” he said.
In 1868, formerly enslaved people and their descendants began meeting in the home of Spencer Donnegan (sometimes spelled Donegan) and his wife, Elizabeth. Spencer had founded an AME church in Springfield in 1843 and owned a barbershop there. His business was burned in the 1908 Race Riot and his brother, William Donnegan, was lynched. Spencer attended the 1853 Colored Convention in Chicago as a Sangamon County delegate and later moved to Lincoln, hoping to start an AME church there.
After several months, the congregation purchased an old high school for $800 and began services with their first pastor, Rev. T. A. Hall.
In the 1870s, the church also functioned as a school and site for political rallies. In 1876, the African Americans of Logan County met there to organize a committee in support of President Ulysses S. Grant.
By 1880, the congregation decided to build a church. It cost $1,000 and the work was completed by artisans from the congregation. It is a brick, one-story building with arched windows. The interior’s limestone sills with wooden frames, plaster walls, wainscoting and wood-paneled ceilings are still intact, although much has deteriorated over the years.
The church is named the Allen Chapel after Richard Allen who founded the AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia and served as the first bishop.
The mission of Landmarks Illinois is to call attention to culturally and historically significant places. Since 1995, more than 300 sites have been listed as endangered.
“The church is not in peril of falling down,” said Quinn Adamowski, the regional advocacy manager for Landmarks Illinois. “We are hoping to build community support to find ways to save the church. It has uses beyond just a church, and there is interest in possibly developing an interpretive center about the history of African Americans in and around Lincoln.”
There has already been an assessment of the exterior. “Next, we’re seeking an architectural firm to assess the interior. From that, short- and long-term plans can be developed,” Adamowski said.
The history of the church includes poet Langston Hughes, who moved to Lincoln with his mother and stepfather when he was 13 years old. His mother, divorced from Langston’s father, had grown up in Kansas, lived in Missouri and was a suffragette. She often left Langston with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, as she traveled to find work. She remarried in 1915 and moved to Lincoln with her new husband, Homer Scott Clark, for just two years before settling in New York where Langston later became a well-known Harlem Renaissance poet.
Another person of note was Billie Dyer whose grandfather, Aaron, was an active member of the Allen Chapel. Billie served in World War I as the first Black surgeon.
William Maxwell, novelist and fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975, grew up in Lincoln. One of his books, Billie Dyer and Other Stories, focuses on people and events in Lincoln.
He wrote, with awe, about his first visit to the church: “During one of those times when my father was searching for a housekeeper and Mrs. Dyer was in our kitchen, she stopped me as we got up from the table at the end of dinner and asked if I’d like to go to church with her to hear a choir from the South. … The church was way downtown on the other side of the courthouse square. As we made our way indoors, I saw that it was crammed with people, and overheated, and I was conscious of the fact that I was the only white person there. Nobody made anything of it. The men and women in the choir were of all ages and dressed in white. For the first time in my life, I heard ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ and ‘Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded,’ and ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?’ and ‘Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho.’ Singing ‘Don’t let nobody turn you round,’ the choir yanked one another around and stamped their feet (in church!).” The visit left an impact on Maxwell.
With a history that is certainly cultural, let’s hope the endangered designation of Allen Chapel will spur interest in saving the site. Donations are appreciated and can be sent to
Friends of Allen Chapel, in care of Ron Keller, 525 Tremont Street, Lincoln, ILÂ 62656.
Cinda Ackerman Klickna loved writing about the chapel as she met new people, found out Candice Trees’ mother was once a pastor at the church and learned more about Langston Hughes and William Maxwell.
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This article appears in Juneteenth 2025.
