Star Hill Museum
By the end of the 18th century, this area was home to a large number of African Americans, many of them freed slaves. Their settlement was largely due to the efforts of local Quakers. A congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was established here circa 1863. On June 12, 1866, the congregation purchased land from Henry W. Postles as the site for their church, which they named “Star of the East”. Members of the church are believed to have participated in the activities of the Underground Railroad and the church’s name is attributed to the symbol of the star as a guide for escaping slaves.
Star Hill AME Church, also known as Star of the East Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church building and cemetery located in Dover, Delaware near Camden, Kent County, Delaware. It was constructed about 1866, and is a one-story, three-bay by three-bay, gable roofed, frame building in a vernacular Gothic Revival-style. It features a small bell tower at the roof ridge. Interments in the adjacent cemetery are believed to begin with the founding of the church in the 1860s, but the earliest marked grave dates from the early 1890s.The church is an important focal point of the community of Star Hill, an early community of African American settlement in Kent County.
Star Hill AME Church was founded in the 1860s and is a daughter church of nearby Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
Today the church is home to the Star Hill Museum, which features exhibits about African American history in Kent County, slavery and the Underground Railroad.