Monongahela church to honor first black National Guard member
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Monongahela
A photograph of Capt. William Catlin from “The Civil War in Pennsylvania: A Photographic History”
MONONGAHELA – A Monongahela church is raising money to honor a former member of its congregation who was among the first black men in the nation to join a National Guard unit.
The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church wants to purchase a monument for its church grounds to honor William Catlin, who also was staging sit-ins outside Mon Valley businesses that excluded black customers five decades before the civil rights movement.
“Of course, it’s a honor,” said the Rev. Mortty G. Ivy, pastor of the historic church at West Main and Seventh streets.
“We’re celebrating the officers and the regiment. They were part of our history,” Ivy said.
The states of Delaware and New York long claimed to have been the first to allow black men into their National Guards until the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission found records showing Catlin and Pennsylvania beat them by 20 years.
Former Gov. John White Geary in 1871 permitted Catlin and other black men to enter an all-black Pennsylvania National Guard unit because he witnessed what black soldiers accomplished in the Civil War.
Catlin served in Company F, 10th Regiment, 17th Division of the National Guard and the 32nd Regiment of the U.S. Colored Army during the Civil War.
He was a barber, born in 1846 in West Newton to free black parents whose relatives had been living in Monongahela as early as 1834.
He died Oct. 10, 1930, at age 84 and was buried in an unsegregated grave in Monongahela Cemetery.
“I still have descendants of him who still attend this church,” Ivy said.
He said the church hopes to have the monument to Catlin in place by April.
Donations for the project should be mailed to Ivy at Bethel AME Church, 700 W. Main St., Monongahela, 15603.