File:Sunnyside Church is located on Mountville Road near Jefferson.jpg

Summary

The Sunnyside Church is located in a beautiful wooded area on Mountville Road, on the sunny side of the mountain past Mar-lu-Ridge near Jefferson. The connection to Brunswick is through the Weedon family, which in the past have made up a large part of the congregation here. Weedons, Smallwoods and Hardys are among the familiar Brunswick area family names buried here on the cemetery grounds to the left of the chapel.

Sunnyside is part of a rich tradition in local African-American history. During the latter part of the 19th century, a number of villages founded by Negroes, including some who had been slaves, began to dot the countryside. A few have vanished, leaving behind perhaps only an overgrown burial ground or a row of house foundations---or no trace at all.

In most of these little settlements, the residents endeavored to build a church and school as quickly as possible. The proliferation of such churches in Frederick County, particularly of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) and Methodist Episcopal (M.E., now United Methodist) denominations, followed on the heels of a national religious revival and coincided with the dynamic growth of black churches between 1865 and 1900.

Protestant Christianity was clearly the central institution of community life in each of the African American enclaves that one may still visit in Frederick County, including Bartonsville, Centerville, Greenfield, Pleasant View and Sunnyside.

(Photo by Peter Wenner; Information excerpted from the Frederick County Historical Society - African American Heritage Sites in the City of Frederick and Frederick County, Maryland.)