The origin of the Mount Hope A.M.E. Zion Church dates back to 1827, when the Quakers of Purchase, New York liberated slaves and settled them on what is known as the Rugged Highlands in the Silver Lake section of White Plains. This heavily populated area with people of African Diaspora was referred to as "Nigger Hill," because it was the site of one of conductor Harriet Ross Tubman’s Underground Railroad Stations. Our fore-parents along with sympathetic Caucasians for our cause of freedom for slaves on the "Hill" helped to find the First Negro Methodist Church known as Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church and later renamed it in 1916 Mount Hope African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Also located on the 37 acres of land is a cemetery known as The Stoney Hill Cemetery. Some of our ancestor who lived on the "Hill" fought in the Civil War [movie Glory] and are buried on this sacred ground.