Disembarking at New York City in 1888, the energetic Englishman Rev. Frederick Neve arrived on American soil with much to share and much still to learn. The Oxford-educated, 32-year-old man-of-the-cloth had been called to rural Albemarle County to serve two established Episcopalian congregations whose constituents were of historically British descent.
During travels between his two charges at Ivy and Greenwood and on other exploratory forays around the area, he was confronted with a number of isolated communities with a scarcity of schools and churches within reasonable walking distances. Just two years after arriving onshore, he established St. John the Baptist Mission in the Ragged Mountains of Albemarle, bringing the number of churches under his care to three.
A bi-monthly newsletter titled Our Mountain Work was begun in 1909 by the Advisory Board of the Archdeaconry of the Blue Ridge to the support that work. In its first issue, Archdeacon Frederick W. Neve spoke about the “Genesis of Mountain Missions in the Diocese of Virginia.” He wrote, in part, “… My idea was to plant strong missions all along the Blue Ridge, about ten miles apart… A worthy old gentleman once took me to task for wasting my time in such a hopeless enterprise.” That very first newsletter identified 18 rural mission points already established and equipped with facilities and workers within the counties of Albemarle and Greene.
By 1913, the little paper enumerated 38 locations where the work was ongoing. The Archdeaconry of the Blue Ridge, during a half-century of labors, expanded to encompass the counties of Albemarle, Augusta, Fauquier, Greene, Loudoun, Page, Rockingham and Shenandoah. Contributions from far flung fields of supporters helped to make the work possible. Pennies saved in the mite boxes of Sunday School children complemented singular gifts sufficient to provide a complete school or church building.
In the Ragged Mountains, between Ivy and Batesville, mission points included St. John the Baptist Mission in Gibson Hollow, and St. Olive’s School for motherless mountain girls, near Ivy. Near Batesville at Farina was Holy Cross Church. Other preaching points radiating from Ivy included St. James at Owensville, and St. Alban’s at White Hall.
Neve was approached by three Episcopalian women living at Crozet, and with their initiative, in 1897, a lot was purchased for a church, and four years later St. George’s came into existence. Neve wrote, “[St. George’s] was built by Mrs. [Elizabeth Bourne] [Charles L.] Wayland and her friends, and it was her interest and active efforts which resulted in there being an Episcopal Church in Crozet, and I regard Mrs. Wayland as being the Mother of St. George’s and she should always be held in grateful memory for the way in which she did her utmost to promote the interest of that Church.”
Between Free Union and Boonesville was Holy Innocents Church at Crossroads. Buck Mountain Church was at Earlysville. Mission posts further afield in western Albemarle County included a school on Via Mountain above Sugar Hollow; St. John the Evangelist at Blackwell’s Hollow; and a school on Frazier Mountain.
At Mission Home, on the border of Albemarle and Greene, group housing was provided for teachers and mission workers from surrounding outposts. Additionally, there was a small hospital, Whittle Memorial Church, St. Hilda’s School, and St. Anne’s Preventorium for the care and strengthening of mountain children.
By the mid-1930s, drastic changes were taking place in the Blue Ridge Mountains due to the impending establishment of Shenandoah National Park. Rev. W. Roy Mason, Neve’s co-laborer in mountain mission work, described that difficult era.
“We are trying to adjust ourselves to the new conditions caused by the Shenandoah National Park running through the middle of our territory,” wrote Rev. Mason, in 1935, “taking two of our missions and leaving the others divided into two groups, one on each side of the Park Area. Now, what was formerly the mission house [at Simmons Gap] is the home of the Park ranger… Park officials were good enough to allow us to move Holy Innocents Chapel from Simmons Gap to our new point at the Cross Roads [west of the village of Free Union, on Free Union Road, near its intersection with Wesley Chapel Road].”
A mission worker wrote in Our Mountain Work newsletter, “Simmons Gap Mission will soon be closed. I have never found a more lovable group than my people at Simmons Gap. It would seem heartless to close up this mission whose record is so fine. But the Park has taken the people… The mission will have to close. The people are going. Many have gone, and almost all will be gone by autumn.”
A number of these former mission chapels—some yet active, others since repurposed—still stand today as Ebenezers to the ones who embraced that call for sacrificial service to a deserving, yet neglected, people. Those laborers are counted among the ones spoken of in the scripture verse Isaiah 52:7, that is found on each masthead of Our Mountain Work: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who publish peace, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
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