Sandwich First Baptist Church, Baptist church in Sandwich, Windsor, Canada.
Sandwich First Baptist Church is a small brick church in Windsor, Ontario, with a rectangular plan and a gabled roof. Its entrance is a two-storey crenellated tower added in 1920, and the pointed-arch windows date from the 1880s Gothic Revival changes. The interior retains hand-fashioned wooden floors, ceiling and wainscoting.
The building was constructed in 1851 by formerly enslaved people who made bricks from local clay. The church served as a crucial destination on the Underground Railroad network.
The congregation began meeting in members' homes before 1840 and moved into a log cabin built in 1847; the present brick church opened on 1 August 1851, the 18th anniversary of slavery's abolition in the British Empire. Its first minister, Madison J. Lightfoot, had helped establish Detroit's Second Baptist Church. Monthly anti-slavery rallies were held here, organised through the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association.
The building is located on Peter Street in Windsor and is accessible to visitors. Regular services are held throughout the week, so checking ahead about visiting hours is helpful before planning your visit.
The church's many crawlspaces and a former trap door to the basement are cited by local history as hiding places where refugees evaded slave-catchers. There is little documentary proof, which fits the secrecy of the work, but the building's own fabric supports the accounts.
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