St. Stephen's Church

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, about a mile northwest of here, was established by the Rev. Nicholas Hamner Cobbs in 1824. Cobbs, later the first Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, is credited with revitalizing that denomination in western Virginia. The St. Stephen’s congregation erected its first sanctuary ca. 1825 on land that had been part of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest tract. This building was replaced in 1844 with the present brick Greek Revival-style sanctuary on the same site. The church’s cemetery, with grave markers dating to the 1840s, reflects a variety of styles of funerary art.