Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church, Melbourne's First Congregation — Melbourne, Florida

Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the congregation behind Melbourne's first church, organized by Black pioneer families on Crane Creek in 1884 and housed in its first church building in 1885. Melbourne Founders, the history site of the Greater Allen Development Corporation, states that the first church structure for Allen Chapel A.M.E. was built in 1885 on the northern end of what is now Lipscomb Street and calls it Melbourne's first house of worship. The congregation continues today as Greater Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church on Lipscomb Street.

Weona Cleveland's town history for the Genealogical Society of South Brevard lists the same order of events: the first church, Allen Chapel A.M.E., was built in 1885, a year before Holy Trinity Episcopal, and three years before Melbourne was incorporated in 1888.

Three married couples organized the congregation. Melbourne Founders records that in 1884, in a tiny house on the southern banks of Crane Creek, Wright and Mary Brothers, Robert and Carrie Lipscomb, and Balaam and Salina Allen met for the purpose of organizing a place of worship for themselves and others of the Black community. Two of the men, Balaam Allen and Wright Brothers, were among the three freedmen who first settled Crane Creek; the church took the Allen name.

The house was the Brothers family home. A WFIT Coastal Connection feature from May 19, 2016 places the first meetings in the dining room of Wright and Mary Brothers' home on Crane Creek, facing the northwest of Lipscomb Street. Space Coast Living quotes the president of the Greater Allen Development Corporation describing the church as founded in the living room of that house.

Other sources confirm the founding families and the year of the first building. The Florida Tech African American Chronology in Brevard County states that in 1885 Mary and Wright Brothers, Salina and Balaam Allen, and Carrie and Robert Lipscomb organized Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal, the first African American church in Melbourne. A 2011 Florida Today report reprinted by History News Network cites historian Anne Flotte that the Allen, Brothers and Lipscomb families started the church in 1885 on Lipscomb Street. Lipscomb Street, home to the church since 1885, shares its name with the Lipscomb founding couple.

The church grew alongside other Black congregations in south Melbourne. The Florida Tech chronology notes that Macedonia Baptist Church was founded under an oak tree in 1889 and built its first sanctuary in 1891, and that in 1918 Macedonia Baptist and Allen Chapel obtained electricity. The same year, it records, many African American men from Melbourne served in World War I.

Lipscomb Street became the spine of a growing neighborhood around the church. The Florida Tech chronology records that in 1909 the first school for African American children in Melbourne opened at the corner of Lipscomb and Line Streets, a one-room building with two rows of seats and about 16 students, taught by Mrs. May Piper. Other congregations followed Allen Chapel: Scott Chapel, a United Methodist church, was organized in 1912 with John and Mary Stone among its founders, and Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church was organized in 1915. Those neighboring churches later shared civic work with Allen Chapel: in March 1962, the chronology adds, the NAACP held a rally at Macedonia Baptist Church protesting discrimination in Melbourne.

A new building followed in the 1960s. Melbourne Founders states that a new edifice was built on Lipscomb Street in 1964 and that Greater Allen Chapel AME Church remains at that site today. In February 2018, according to a WFIT report from May 22, 2018, Greater Allen Chapel celebrated 132 years of service to the Melbourne community.

The church was a starting point for organized voter registration. The Florida Tech chronology records that in 1965 the South Brevard NAACP organized a voter registration march beginning at Allen Chapel with 120 Black and white participants. The same entry notes that Brevard Hospital in Melbourne was cited that year for maintaining segregation.

That march came during a decade of local change that the chronology documents in detail. It records that in 1963 three quarters of Melbourne's restaurants agreed to a 60-day integration trial, and that in 1965 Ted Nichols became the first African American member of the Melbourne City Council. Greater Allen Chapel AME Church appears among the contributors the chronology thanks for helping compile the Brevard County civil rights timeline.

The founding house survives as a museum. Melbourne Founders states that the original house of worship, the home of Wright and Mary Brothers, was relocated and restored. Space Coast Living reports that the Greater Allen Development Corporation saved the cottage from demolition when apartments were planned on the south side of Crane Creek, and that Northrop Grumman provided the $35,000 needed to move the 900-square-foot structure two blocks, during the pandemic, to Brothers Avenue across from Greater Allen Church.

The restored house is now the Melbourne Founders Museum at Crane Creek. Space Coast Living reports that its period furnishings include one of the original church pews from Allen Chapel and a vintage kitchen stove, and lists its hours as 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the second Saturday of the month, with a suggested $10 donation for adults and free admission for children 12 and under.

Greater Allen Chapel's development corporation hosts an annual festival tied to the church's founding story. Melbourne Founders describes the Greater Allen Development Corporation as a 501(c)(3) public charity and states that it hosts the Annual Melbourne Founders Festival to increase awareness of African American culture and history and its role in developing the city of Melbourne.

WFIT reported that the 2018 festival was held along the banks of Crane Creek at the corner of Prospect Avenue and Lipscomb Street, with a reception on May 25, the main festival on May 26 from noon to 7 p.m., and a Sunday Gospel Fest on May 27. WFIT's 2016 feature on the Crane Creek Founders Heritage Festival described it as free and open to the public, hosted by Greater Allen Chapel to celebrate the heritage of the Crane Creek founders.