Frankford WV

Gilboa-Frankford Church

After yesterday's diversion, occasioned by the bovine antics encountered the other day, we return to Southern West Virginia, and the Greenbrier Valley for another mid-summer day, actually 4 years worth of mid-summers days, at the first church I served out of Seminary, Frankford United Methodist Church.

As the banner above indicates, the congregation first organized as "Gilboa" and constructed a meeting house a little ways outside of town on a back road near the road to Anthony (it is a little hard to describe how to get there, but go out the Anthony road and make the first left and look for an overgrown spot of brushes on the left, that is where the Gilboa meeting house was).

In 1841, the congregation moved into the "Big City" of Frankford with its permanent spring (still flowing through the spring house on the left).

They constructed a handsome building out of homemade and fired brick. The structure was sturdy enough to survive the mis-use of it by soldiers during the prelude and aftermath of the Battle of Droop Mountain. During this time it was used as both a hospital and a stable.

After the Civil War was over, the building was in such dis-repair, and the people in the community so poor, they only met for school on an occassional basis for several years. They did not really get "going again" until the 1870's.

Since then they have continued to meet, as part of a circuit of 2-3-4-or even 5 churches at times! They haven't set the world afire a-la-Billy Graham, but they have kept the fire going.