Hebron Church (Intermont, West Virginia)

Hebron Church (Intermont, West Virginia)

Hebron Church was founded in 1786 by German settlers in the Cacapon River Valley. It was the first Lutheran church west of the Shenandoah Valley. The church’s congregation built the present Greek Revival-style ​1 1⁄2-story church building in 1849. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

About Hebron Church (Intermont, West Virginia) in brief

Summary Hebron Church (Intermont, West Virginia)Hebron Church was founded in 1786 by German settlers in the Cacapon River Valley. It was the first Lutheran church west of the Shenandoah Valley. The church’s congregation built the present Greek Revival-style ​1 1⁄2-story church building in 1849. A modern brick community building, within the historic boundary south of the church and cemetery, is used for church activities. Hebron Church and its cemetery are located east of Carpers Pike in the unincorporated community of Intermont, about 3.5 miles southwest of Yellow Spring, and 5. 63 miles northeast of Wardensville. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural distinction as a local example of vernacular Greek Revival church architecture in the Potomac Highlands. As of October 2015, the church continues to be used by the West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The cemetery contains over 600 gravestones, several yuccas, a hemlock tree, and a boxwood. A paved brick walkway leads from the gate to the northwestern façade and two main entrances to the church. The Cacalon River, just southeast of the Church, is hidden from the church by mature foliage. The George Washington National Forest, encompassing the forested area east of the CACapon River, is east ofThe church is on the plain of a predominantly rural agricultural and foresting area of southeastern Hampshire County, in the cacapon river valley.

The land upon which the church 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. In 1681, Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, and Lord Colepeper received a new charter for the entire land grant from James II in 1688. After the Restoration in 1660, Charles II finally ascended to the English throne. In 1662, Lord Cole peper sold his share of the land grant to Thomas Fairfax, the son of Thomas Fairfax. Under Lord Fairfax’s ownership, the land was predominantly inhabited by English-speaking settlers as early as the late 1730s. As settlement progressed during the second half of the second century of the century, the fertile land of Hampshire County attracted German settlers from Pennsylvania and elsewhere in Virginia. In 1742, a German pastor, Henry Muhlenberg, began to establish congregations in the largest communities of western Virginia. He served there from 1742 until his death in 1742. In 1821, when records and sermons transitioned to English. The church is surrounded on its northeastern, southeastern, and southwestern sides by a cemetery which is still in use. They are accessible from WV 259 by a semicircular asphalt driveway, separated from theChurch and cemetery by a wrought iron fence and lined with large, old-growth maple trees along the property’s northwestern perimeter.