The Wadsworth Congregational Church of Whitsett, North Carolina, was founded by Reverend W. Madison Lindsay in 1870, when he returned to the county of his birth after he had fled to Canada and then to Massachusetts as a runaway slave.

Reverend Lindsay had a remarkable early life. Born in 1833 to slave parents in the community then known as Dennysville, he escaped from his master to Canada and later re-entered the United States and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he took a position of valet to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Known as an abolitionist, Longfellow would have likely been sympathetic to Lindsay’s plight. Longfellow traveled to Europe in 1861 and according to church tradition, Lindsay accompanied the poet on his foreign travels. While traveling in Europe together, Longfellow recognized the leadership potential of the young Lindsay and assisted him in entering Oberlin College in Ohio, a co-educational institution, which admitted free blacks and former slaves. Lindsay attended Oberlin from 1862-1866, according to college records.

After graduation and the end of the Civil War, Lindsay returned to Dennysville, and with reputed monetary help from his benefactor, purchased land, in 1871, and helped the community start this church.

According to church tradition, the community was named Wadsworth after Longfellow’s mother. A log cabin Church was built and because of his local roots, Lindsay was very successful in uniting his community under his religious leadership. The Wadsworth Congregational Church was likely the hub of community activity, like so many other African American churches.

Congregationalist black churches in the South are quite rare. The congregation of the Wadsworth Congregational Church, however, had differing ingredients that undoubtedly led to its success as a functioning church and school. Rather than a white northern minister coming to organize the church, as was often the case, a former slave and Guilford County native, Reverend Madison Lindsay, returned to begin his missionary work. His many years in the North are reflected in the Wadsworth church building and denomination. Additional influence most certainly came from Oberlin College, where Lindsay attended, and which began as a Congregationalist school.