Children’s Chapel United Church of Christ will be designated as an historic landmark, based on a unanimous vote Tuesday night by Graham’s city council.
Since 1875, Children’s Chapel United Church of Christ Children’s Chapel has been a beacon of hope for freed slaves and their descendants, who’ve managed to keep this storied institution alive long past the demise of Jim Crow segregation.
Located at 334 East Harden Street in Graham, Children’s Chapel celebrated its 150th anniversary in September 2025.
More than two dozen representatives from the church were on hand Tuesday night, when Graham’s city council gave its blessing to the historic landmark designation, following a review and preliminary approval at the state level late last year.
Rev. Rodney Foxx, who has served as pastor of Children’s Chapel UCC since May 1991, is pictured on the far right. His wife, Staley Foxx, is shown on the front row, third from the left. Zipporah Clark Baldwin, chair of Graham’s Historic Resources Commission, is pictured beside Rev. Foxx.
The group is holding a photo presented by former Graham mayor Jennifer Talley.
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“Many members of the congregation helped make the bricks used for building in 1911, and they worked together to install twenty stained-glass windows, despite limited financial resources,” Kristi Brantley, the Local Preservation Commissions chair, wrote in her December 2025 analysis for the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR).
Additionally, the Office of State Archaeology has determined that archaeological remains may be “an important component of the significance of the church and cemetery landscape, and those should be considered in any future improvements to the property,” Brantley wrote in notifying Graham city officials that the church’s application had met the criteria to be designated as an historic landmark.
The church’s significance was apparent in its earliest days when it emerged as an offshoot of Providence United Church of Christ, whose own origins hark back more than 260 years to the late Colonial period.
The impetus for the church’s foundation actually came from a white pastor named J.W. Wellons, who realized that Providence’s black congregants needed a new place to worship after the Ku Klux Klan demanded race segregation in the religious domain.
Wellons went on to establish a new congregation in 1875. A year later, he and his flock moved into their first permanent building – a wooden structure built on land donated by a former slave owner, William “Bill” Trollinger.
The church’s original building eventually gave way to a new sanctuary, which opened its doors at 334 East Harden Street in 1911 and has been substantially upgraded since.
The Children’s Chapel ultimately took its name from an antebellum expression that one of Wellons’ assistant pastors had used to address the enslaved blacks in the community.
