The Oak Grove Baptist Church Historic District consists of five discontinuous resources associated with a twentieth century congregation created from the eighteenth-century, African American First Baptist Church of Williamsburg. The new congregation built a church and established a cemetery along Rochambeau Drive in York County. In 1912 working with other churches and the local school board, they built the neighboring Oak Grove School to address the lack of educational opportunities for African Americans in the county. In 1942 the church was forced to move when the federal government condemned over 10,000 acres in the region for Camp Peary. Of this original campus, the church and school are now archaeological sites. The congregation moved to a new location and established a new cemetery, as access to the older burial ground was arduous. The original campus was owned by the federal government until 1975 when it was acquired through a land exchange with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation who subsequently conveyed the cemetery to the trustees of Oak Grove Baptist Church. The “new” 1946 church building is an unpretentious Carpenter Gothic style frame church with lancet windows and a graduated entrance tower, still used by the congregation. The district has areas of significance of Ethnic Heritage, Religion, Archaeology, as well as Art for several of the handmade concrete grave markers in the original cemetery.
The National Register nomination was co-authored with the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research. The district was listed in March 2023 and a copy of the nomination can be found here.