The only remaining rural church in southern Sarasota County dating from the 1910s, Johnson Chapel was built as the Osprey Missionary Baptist Church in 1915 on the west side of the Tamiami Trail in Osprey, six miles north of Laurel, by Bertha Polter Palmer. When a new church was constructed in 1947, the Johnson Chapel Missionary Baptist Church purchased and moved the one-story, wood frame vernacular building to its present site. It has since served as a church, community center and a meeting place for the Lily White Lodge #22 (an African American association established to provide burial benefits and health care).

Information provided by the Florida Division of Historical Resources, a division of the Florida Department of State.

Photo courtesy of Ebyabe.