Used until about 1979, when its ceiling structure collapsed, the 1907 frame, vernacular, late Victorian Gothic Revival church is the second building to serve black Methodists of the Olivet Hill community. The first frame church, moved about 1863 from the nearby white Olivet Methodist Church in Galena, was probably that congregation's first bulding, dating from about 1804, the main building until 1842, when a new brick church was built. Between much of the period from 1842 to 1863, while adjacent to the Galena church, the old frame building was said to have been used for enslaved and free black worshippers and Sunday school classes in a period of increasing segregation wihin the Methodist Church. By the turn of the twentieth century the community that was begun before the Civil War by landowning free blacks was large and thriving, so a quite costly, elaborate, and large building was undertaken. Its construction predated by only a few years the exodus that began with farm mechanization and better employment prospects elsehere during World War I and continued through the agricultural depression of the 1920s, the general depression of the 1930s, and World War II. Architecturally, the church is among the more complex of the country's rural churches of the period. It is quite unlike the more common three-part churches (vestibule-tower, nave, chancel projection, all end-to-end). This church's massing is irregular, there is interesting shingling and trim on the main gable end, and the interior arrangement is unusal, with the pews not across the narrow width of the main seciton but facing the long north side and the sizable wing there. It may have been built from a purchased plan, which seems to have been inadequate in its specifications for roof constructin, causing a partial collapse about 1979 that left the building unsafe for further use. For the 70 years of its existence, however, the church, along with the adjacent school, was a focal point for the religious and community life of Olivet Hill.

http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/stagsere/se1/se5/028000/028000/028094/pdf/msa_se5_28094.pdf