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Stepping back in time, a
look at church’s history
By Richard Lykes
Special to the Rappahannock News
The Baptist community of Flint Hill actually began in the late 1770s ig the home of Allen Wyley who gathered friends and neighbors in his home for worship services.
In 1853-1854, the Flint Hill Baptist Church was organized and built with the help of 24 charter members. A number of these original members’ descendants still attend the church. The congregation has met continuously at this location since the early 1850s, with a 28-year period in which the church closed for lack of a minister and declining membership.
Thanks to the dedication and public spiritedness of a small group of parishioners that yearned for the church’s revival as a house of worship, the historic church was lovingly restored and reopened for services in 1996.
Leading this group were James Massie, Arland Welch, Mary Gordon Edmonds, Annie Moore, Garland Sealock, Robert Moore, Lewis Moore, Jr., Dorothy Moore and Mary Blaidsdale.
In 1997, the Virginia Landmarks Registry and the National Register of Historic Places placed the Flint Hill Baptist Church on their lists. Although built in a simple American gothic revival style, there is nothing plain about the church’s stained glass windows added to the building in 1920.
Crafted in Tiffany-style with beautifully colored double-glass blown in Bavaria, the Flint Hill church’s nine windows are priceless treasures of the community. The windows depict such biblical scenes as the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, Jesus as a shepherd, Easter morning with angels and Mary, and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene.
An interesting footnote to the history of the church is the lack of any reference to the “War Between the States” in its records. Although the war is not mentioned, there is a gravestone in the churchyard that honors “A. C. Willis, Mosb/s Command, killed October 13, 1864.”
Willis, a young layman at the Flint Hill Baptist Church, was hanged by command of General Fowell, a Union officer, in retaliation for a union soldier said to have been killed by Mosby’s men.
See HISTORY, Page B2
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