A hint of a building sits startlingly against the trees in Hanover County, Virginia, quietly representing the history of our country’s arduous struggle for religious freedom. Polegreen Church was key to the 18th century movement known as the Great Awakening. Established in 1747, Polegreen Church was used as a meeting house by Presbyterian dissenters who illegally rebelled against the Anglican Church. More than two-and-a-half centuries later, the skeletal outline of the “Ghost Church,” as some modern observers call it, stands as a reminder of this headstrong beginning – and its violent destruction.

Reverend Samuel Davies became the first Presbyterian minister licensed to preach in Virginia in 1747 and in 1748 he began to minister at Polegreen Church as well as six other meeting houses in Central Virginia, remaining there until 1759. He frequently preached at Polegreen Church, most notably to Patrick Henry, who attended services with his mother. An evangelist, Davies’ sermons have been described as rigorously structured and punctuated with vivid similes and dramatic exhortations. Davies is often credited for his efforts in educating slaves, but this education was for the sole purpose of Christianizing slaves. Davies taught slaves to read and write because he viewed “education as central to conversion.” He was not personally against slavery and was thought to have likely been a slaveholder himself.

Polegreen Church was destroyed on June 1, 1864, when Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant attempted to break through Confederate lines. Union sharpshooters occupied the church, and Confederate artillerymen from the Richmond Howitzers fired on it. The church burned to the ground, without even the foundation left standing. Hanover County was never able to restore the building after the war due to lack of funds, and so the memory of its architecture faded into its history. A specter of Polegreen Church rose from the ashes over a century later, designed by architect Carlton Abbott.

There were no surviving photographs of the building, so Abbott designed the reconstruction from two drawings by Lieutenant Thomas M. Farrell, dated May 29, 1862 – nearly two years before the holy building was brought to permanent ruin. Farrell was a Union soldier with the 15th New York Volunteer Engineers, who passed through the church on a reconnaissance mission for General George McClellan. According to the Historic Polegreen Church Foundation, the sketches were discovered by Farrell’s great-grandson, Norman T. Albright, Jr. Check out their website to view these sketches. Additionally, there are a couple references to Polegreen Church in the Richmond Enquirer in 1840-1841. Sadly, none of these papers mention any details about the structure itself. Historic Polegreen Church is now represented by beams outlining the framework like a prompt for the imagination. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Basic walls and windows are drawn with cold white steel like a visible ghost, with the ceiling open to the sky above.

Beautifully eerie, this open-air whisper of a building remains open to the public free-of-charge, sunset to sunrise. Here is the address that will get you there. The surrounding view is picturesque no matter the time of year – and something I certainly enjoyed visiting while I continue to find ways to remain socially distant!