Richlands of New River Chapel

This ground has housed three different Protestant congregations over nearly three centuries. The first church in Onslow County took root here around seventeen thirty-one on land known as the Rich Lands of New River. Anglicans worshipped here under Saint John's Parish until around seventeen fifty-eight, when Baptist evangelists arrived.

The congregation changed its name multiple times and shifted between Baptist associations, from General Baptist to Primitive Baptist to Missionary Baptist, across a hundred and thirty-four years. Then in eighteen seventy-five a Disciples of Christ evangelist began holding meetings here, and by eighteen seventy-seven the congregation had converted wholesale. One chapel, one site, three very different traditions.

It is a quiet map of how Protestant Christianity moved and changed across the rural South.