Allen Chapel of the AME Church on Seventh Street, formerly Spencer Chapel of the German Methodist Society, Portsmouth, Ohio

Originally built in 1853 for Portsmouth, Ohio's German Methodist Society, and known as Spencer Chapel, this house of worship was re-christened Allen Chapel in 1868 when it became the home of the city's African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. At the time of the celebration of the Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment on the 27th of April 1870, Rev. Philip Toliver led the congregation and many of its members were not only veterans of the Union Army but also had worked in various capacities on the Underground Railroad. The selection of Allen Chapel -- home of Portsmouth's oldest black religious organization, with a founding date of 1837 -- as the location for the ratification celebration speaks to the centrality of this congregation and Portsmouth's black community in the city's abolition and civil rights movements.