Old Salem Church

Old Salem Church. Anti-Slavery Congregation in the Confederacy. , This was the only United Brethren Church that the anti-slavery denomination opened within the Confederacy during the Civil War. It was constructed on the northeastern side of Green Hill along Joes Creek northwest of Edom in 1833 as Green Hill Methodist Episcopal Meeting House. In 1863 during the Civil War, local members of the United Brethren in Christ bought the church from the Methodists for $500. The United Brethren moved the building to a rocky field on the Abraham Rolston farm about one-and-a-half miles north of Singers Glen on present-day Turleytown Road. Virginia Bishop J.J. Glossbrenner brought window glass from West Virginia through Federal lines. The relocated building was dedicated on December 27, 1863, as Salem United Brethren in Christ Church. William J. Miller, a local preacher and miller, helped to organize Salem Church., John W. Howe, the United Brethren preacher assigned to Rockingham County, also helped organize the church and held it together during the war. Hiram Brown (1871-1964), a later owner of the property, was told that soldiers quartered their horses in the church., Old Salem became the mother church of at least five other United Brethren congregations, including Singers Glen, Cherry Grove, and several churches in the Brocks Gap area. Late in the 1880s, the United Brethren abandoned the deteriorated building. Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church used it as a mission site early in the 1900s. During most of the twentieth century, it served as a barn and stable on the Hiram and Robert Brown farm., (sidebar) , Old Salem Church was dismantled in 2005, moved to this location in Singers Glen, and rebuilt between 2006 and 2008 as a historic chapel for the community., (captions) , Part of Rockingham Co., 1864 , William J. Miller (born 1829) John W. Howe (1829-1903) , Courtesy Eastern Mennonite University Archives , Old Salem as a horse barn, mid twentieth century - Courtesy John Coffman