A week or so ago, I took a spin down to Dorchester County on Maryland's lower Eastern Shore to hunt for old oyster cans for a friend. Imagine my absolute shock when I found that they now sell for upwards of $300!
The friend who was with me has a house on Hooper's Island, so he knew the back roads and hidden gems. As we were getting ready to wind up the day, he said he had one more thing to show me.
After winding along the lonliest road which ran through Blackwater Wildlife Refuge, we came around a bend, and there, glowing in the dappled sunlight, sat the absolutely charming Oak Grove M.E. Church South.
From the Medusa description:
The Oak Grove Methodist Church is a diminutive frame chapel that stands in a grove of trees not far from the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge north of the former crossroads village of Golden Hill. Clearly influenced architecturally by Grace P. E. Church on Taylor's Island, the Oak Grove church is a less elaborately executed Gothic Revival design with the same steeply pitched gable roof, lancet windows and hexagonal gable end windows. Rather than operating as traditional sash windows, the long lancet windows open by turning on a center pivot. The full history of this congregation has been obscured by the loss of records and discontinuation of the membership, but it evidently started as a Methodist Episcopal Church South. E. C. Hallman, in his history of peninsular Methodism, places the construction of the chapel in 1892. According to the Lake, Griffing, and Stevenson Atlas, published in 1877, a Methodist congregation worshipped at this site in an earlier building. At some point during the early- to mid- twentieth century the name was changed to Oak Grove M. E. Church. No longer used for weekly service.
There are not a lot of images of the church, but my friend told me that the last time he'd driven by, it was not in such good repair. It's actually run by the Oak Grove Cuurch Foundation.
The graveyard, with its above-ground graves, was also in good repair.
No comments:
Post a Comment