The Story
The Polegreen Church was the first non-Anglican church in Virginia. It was named after a 17th-century landowner, George Polegreen.
After Methodist Reverand George Whitefield preached at Williamsburg during the First Great Awakening, Samuel Morris built a reading room in Mechanicsville, near Richmond, Virginia. In that room, they read the bible and Whitefield's sermons. In 1743, Virginia's colonial assembly permitted four non-Anglican meeting houses, Polegreen Church being one of them.
Presbyterian missionary Samuel Davies, one of the first non-Anglican ministers licensed in Virginia, evangelized at the church in 1743.
During the American Civil War, battle lines formed on opposite sides of Polegreen Church as the Union army advanced on Richmond. A Confederate artillery shell fired to push out Union sharpshooters. It hit the wooden building and it burned to the ground.
Today, white steel beams show the historic structure's former dimensions. The signs remind us of our history of religious persecution and eventual freedom.