The building type associated with the refugees that is most likely to have survived is the church. It represented the institution most central to the lives of the Underground Railroad settlers. Churches ministering specifically to the black population were established largely in response to negative attitudes of the white majority, who, while decrying slavery, were often unwilling to accept the formerly enslaved on an equal footing. The black churches became the most visible symbol of the parallel societies that evolved in places where numbers of Underground Railroad refugees settled.

The African Methodist
Episcopal Church
By the 1820s, the American-based African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church had established branches throughout southwestern Ontario. Within a decade it had spread as far east as Toronto and had a membership of some 2,000 congregants. The Nazrey AME Church, hand-built by its congregation and preserved as part of the North American Black Historical Museum in Amherstburg, has been designated a national historic site.

The British Methodist
Episcopal Church
After 1850 and passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, it became increasingly dangerous for African Canadian church officials to travel to the annual conferences of the AME Church in the United States. Desiring a more accessible church government closer to home and anxious to underscore allegiance to their new homeland, members of the AME Church in Canada began to lobby for local self-government of their church. Eventually they succeeded, and in 1856 the British Methodist Episcopal Church (BME) was created. A former AME minister, the Reverend Willis Nazery, was elected as its first bishop. The BME Church continued the growth begun under the AME, establishing congregations not only in Upper Canada but also in Nova Scotia and Bermuda.

St. Catharines British Methodist Episcopal Church (Salem Chapel) (1851-55),
St. Catharines, Ontario
Designated a National Historic Site
of Canada

The R. Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel in Niagara Falls, one of the oldest BME churches in Ontario, has been designated a national site, as has The St. Catharines BME Church (Salem Chapel). It is one of the churches believed to have been attended by the famous Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman during the years that she lived in St. Catharines. After passage of the American Fugitive Slave Act made it unsafe for fugitives from slavery to remain in the northern states, Tubman guided some 300 fugitives, including her elderly parents, to Canada. BME Church membership peaked just before the American Civil War, after which reduced populations brought about the amalgamation of several formerly separate congregations. Most AME and BME churches united in 1884.