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Old Stone Church, Lewisburg

West Virginia

The Old Stone Presbyterian Church in Lewisburg was built in seventeen ninety-six from local limestone and is the oldest church building in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains. An addition in eighteen thirty expanded it to roughly seventy-five by forty-four feet, giving it the blocky, solid form still visible today.

During the Civil War the building served as an emergency hospital after the Battle of Lewisburg on May twenty-third, eighteen sixty-two. Confederate wounded were treated inside, and ninety-five soldiers who died were eventually reburied in a cross-shaped mound near the south wall. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-two and continues to hold regular worship services, its congregation unbroken across more than two centuries of Appalachian history.

Sources (2)
Map of West Virginia with this story marked