Preserved Skinnersville church bears builders’ handprints

As N.C. Highway 32 winds through Washington County, it passes through Skinnersville, an unincorporated township with a population of just over 700.

There isn’t much here; a few homes along the south bank of the Albemarle Sound, but it’s mostly open farmland and forest. Pea Ridge, where the first bridge connecting the south bank of the Albemarle Sound with the north side and Edenton, is about 2 miles to the east. Roper is 8 miles or so west.

There is a historical marker on the north side of the highway that the Division of Archives and History posted in 1974 that reads: “Rehoboth Church — Colonial Anglican congregation known as Skinner’s Chapel. Present church constructed 1850-1853. Now United Methodist.”

Behind the sign, framed by trees and expansive farm fields, is the Rehoboth Methodist Church. A lovingly restored, simple, Greek Revival structure.

The church has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. The evaluation of the structure noted, “The simple yet dignified frame church in its picturesque setting in a grove of trees draped with Spanish moss has been preserved through local efforts as a landmark of the county.”

Many of those trees are gone now, lost to time and weather. The restoration was originally done by the Washington County Historical Society, but the more recent work that has recreated the original look and feel of the church has been done by the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society.

Chris Barber, chair of the organization, is one of the founding members of the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society. She had retired from teaching in 2006 and was looking for something to do, had seen the church, knew it needed work, and “I started calling around,” she said.

What she found were the people who had worked on the church in the 1970s and brought it to the attention of the National Park Service, the organization that administers historic places, were, “either dead, moved away, or they were elderly people.”

Two years later in 2008, she and four others founded the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Grants followed — perhaps the most important was the first $32,000 award.

“It enabled us to raise the church, but because it was sinking,” Barber said. “When you looked at the images, it looked like the brick foundations were failing. But actually what was happening is the sills were rotting, and as they rotted, they were twisting the church on the foundation.”

The grant was the first of a number of funding sources that have brought the church back to a more accurate state of restoration. Some of what has been found as the church has been restored has been surprising.

For instance, the windows are original, Barber said.

“There are no records at any time that the windows were ever changed. I wrote a grant to have the windows refurbished and restored,” she said, adding that was in 2019.

Barber, who has written a book about the history of the church and its significance, “The Tie That Binds: Rehoboth Methodist Church and 300 Years of Worship,” points to some of the more fascinating features and pieces of history housed within the church.

When the church was completed in 1853, the structure did not originally have a ceiling.

“We know from some records that they probably put the ceiling in about the 1880s or so. If you look, you’re going to see the prints of hands. The men in the church did it,” she said.

The church is a time capsule in other ways, offering a glimpse of life in antebellum North Carolina.

Occupying 1.75 acres donated in 1850, apparently by Joseph H. Norman, who is described in the National Historic Places evaluation as, “the owner of fifty slaves and was Washington County’s fourth largest slaveholder.”

There are no records indicating who built the church, although the evaluation suggests it was the enslaved people Norman owned who did the work.

“Local tradition has it that these slaves built the church,” the evaluation noted.

The church, because of its mostly original state, features details seen only in the oldest churches, such as its two doors — men entered on one side, women on the other.

The pews are original and are fitted with a separator between the male and female congregants’ seating.

The doors of the church face away from the highway.

“That road (N.C. Highway 32) wasn’t here when they built the church. The main road was there,” Barber said, pointing toward an open field.

Enslaved people were permitted to attend the church, but segregation was enforced. There was also a separate door for the enslaved families that opens to stairs leading to a balcony where the pews are narrower and not as well built, compared to the pews on the main floor.

The balcony itself is significantly angled toward a high balustrade. When looking into the chapel, only the pulpit and pastor would have been visible from here.

For Barber, the church’s importance extends beyond its architectural significance.

“This is the fourth church in a small area of this county,” she said, noting that the county’s first church was built about a mile and a half to 2 miles away. “That was South Shore Chapel, built somewhere between 1715 and 1733.”

The county’s second house of worship was Skinner’s Chapel, built, Barber writes in her book, probably because, “the first chapel … fell into disrepair.”

“No records have been found that give exact dates, but presumably, Skinner’s was built sometime in the mid-18th century,” she writes.

At the end of the 18th century, the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, who was instrumental in bringing the Anglican Church to North Carolina, became aware of Skinner’s Chapel and that the structure was no longer fit to be used.

“In his travels … Pettigrew saw that old Skinner’s Chapel was in poor condition and dangerous for continued use,” Barber noted.

Acting on Pettigrew’s advice, church leaders purchased an acre for a shilling, and “sometime in 1805 the new church (Swain’s Chapel) was completed.”

By the middle of the 19th century, Swain’s Chapel itself had fallen into disrepair and leaders decided to build a new church to higher standards than any of the previous churches. That church is now Rehoboth Methodist Church.

The history of the churches of Washington County reflects broader societal changes happening here during the 18th and 19th centuries, including growing intolerance.

That first south shore chapel was the result of the Vestry Act of 1715, which was in response to the growing influence of the Friend’s Society, or Quakers, in the region.

Writing about the influence of the Vestry Acts, the first was in 1701, the Nahunta Friends Church in Pikeville noted that, “With the planting of the Church of England and the Vestry Acts of 1701 and 1715, religious tolerance was no longer practiced and problems for Friends increased.”

Pettigrew was an Anglican deacon and minister, but after the American Revolution the Anglican Church was in decline. The Protestant faith, including the Methodist Church, based on the reformist drive of John Wesley in England, took root here.

It is unclear whether the third church here, Swain’s Chapel, began as an Anglican or Methodist church, but by the time Rehoboth was completed, the congregation was Methodist.

For perhaps the first 50 or 60 years of its existence, the Rehoboth Methodist Church thrived, but over time, the primitive, sparse nature of the church may have been behind the loss of parishioners to more modern houses of worship.

“They had wooden heat originally,” Barber said. “Probably by the mid-20th century, or just before, they put in kerosene heaters.”

The church did not have electricity until 1965. There is still no indoor plumbing.

“It was like living in the 18th or 19th century when you came to church,” Barber said.

By 1970, the church was no longer listed as part of the United Methodist Church. Today, there’s no congregation, but the church is available for special events by contacting the preservation society.