Lewisburg WV

Another Old Church --

Old Stone Presbyterian Church Lewisburg

In covering my mid-summer journeys in WV from a church perspective, we started off in 1786 with the Rehobeth Church in Monroe County near Union WV. In our last posting we went north to Frankford, and just outside Frankford, to the Gilboa Meeting House and then Frankford United Methodist Church. Today, we return to our scene of a few postings ago, Lewisburg, for the Old Stone Presbyterian Church of Lewisburg, built in 1796.

Old Stone church bills itself as ". . .the oldest church west of the Alleghanies that has remained in continuous use. . ." And indeed it is still well used. In Lewisburg, as in many Southern West Virginia Communities, the Presbyterian Church in the center part of town is "THE" church to belong to. If you want to be considered a "mover and a shaker" within your community you become Presbyterian.

In addition to dating back to the late 19th Century, Old Stone is also noted for the fact that in 1862, the graveyard just south of it, was the "front line" for the Battle of Lewisburg. After the Battle was over, many of the soldiers who were killed there, were buried there. A few years after the war, their bodies were re-interred and the Union soldiers moved to a "proper" United States Cemetery, and the Confederate Soldiers were placed in a mass grave on the hillside cemetery a few hundred yards to the west of the church's graveyard.

CORRECTION

A few of my faithful readers have called my attention to the fact that in an earlier blog I mis-identified a butterfly that GrandMom had captured in her camera's lense. And so, out of a sense of propriety, and because GrandMom also corrected me, I hereby state for all to know:

This is a Silvery Checkerspot (Chlosyne nycteis).

Well, at least someone out there is reading some of this.