Capon Chapel

Capon Chapel

Capon Chapel, also known as Capon Baptist Chapel and Capon Chapel Church, is a mid-19th century United Methodist church in Capon Bridge, West Virginia. A Baptist congregation was gathering at the site of the present-day church by at least 1756. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 2012, in recognition of its representation of the rural religious architecture of the Potomac Highlands region.

About Capon Chapel in brief

Summary Capon ChapelCapon Chapel, also known as Capon Baptist Chapel and Capon Chapel Church, is a mid-19th century United Methodist church in Capon Bridge, West Virginia. A Baptist congregation was gathering at the site of the present-day church by at least 1756. The church was used as a place of worship by Baptists until the late 19th or early 20th century. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 2012, in recognition of its representation of the rural religious architecture of the Potomac Highlands region. It remains a Methodist church, now a part of the United Methodist Church, holding Methodist services four Sundays per month at 1pm. It is 894 feet east of the Cacapon River, from which the church derives its name. The land upon which Capon chapel is located was originally part of. the Northern Neck Proprietary, a land grant that the exiled Charles II awarded to seven of his supporters in 1649 during the English Interregnum. The majority of these settlers had come from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, many of whom were either Quakers or former Quakers who established the oldest Baptist and Methodist denominations in the area. The Cacapon River Valley was predominantly inhabited by English-speaking settlers as early as the late 1730s and early 1800s. The cemetery contains the remains of American Civil War veterans from the Union and the Confederacy, as well as free and enslaved African Americans. It also contains boxwoods on its north and south sides, a single holly on its east side, and forsythias along its west side.

The property consists of the church structure, and its associated cemetery, which is enclosed partly by the historic wrought iron fence and partly by a chain link fence. A flagpole stands at the center of the cemetery’s eastern perimeter, and the church and cemetery are accessible through a gravel driveway to the north; to the west, a cluster of tall oak trees blocks access to the road. The church and Cemetery are situated atop a grassy hill on a 0. 96 acres plot of land, at an elevation of 869 feet, in a rural agricultural area within the C Acapapon River Valley. The site is 2. 01 miles south of Capon bridge and 1. 14 miles northeast of the unincorporated community of Bubbling Spring in southeastern Hampshire County. In 1672, Lord Colepeper sold his share of the land grant to Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, and in 1681, he sold the new charter for the land to Lord Fairfax’s son Thomas Fairfax 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. Under the ownership of Lord Fairfax, the land passed to Katherine Fairfax in 1719. In 1719, the CAcapon River valley became the home of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1852, Joseph Pugh allocated the land for the construction of a church, which was completed in 1852. As of 2017, the church still holds Methodist services on the Cap on Bridge Methodist circuit.