Nineveh Presbyterian Church will be open on October 20 and 21 for the church and home tour of the Festival of Leaves. This typical steepled and white clapboarded country church was built in 1916 to replace the original Presbyterian Church which had been struck by lightning and burned on August 29, 1913. But the religious heritage of the Presbyterian congregation goes back more than two centuries when devout persons of the Quaker faith built here a simple log meeting house for the Friends of Crooked Run community.

        The Quaker Robert McKay, Jr., who had received a grant on Crooked Run at Cedarville in 1731, was followed by a number of families who were also of the quiet persuasion. The families of Grubbs, Antram, Fawcett, Oglesby, and Painter, to name a few, were all Quakers who were early settlers in the Cedarville-Nineveh area. The records show that as early as 1734 there was a community of Friends on Crooked Run, for in September of that year they held a meeting in the home of Robert McKay, Jr., as shown in the journal of John Fothergill, visiting Quaker minister from England.

        The Friends at Crooked Run had official ties with the Hopewell Meeting and it is stated in the minutes of that meeting that on August 4, 1760 the Crooked Run congregation had been, for several years past indulged by this meeting with liberty of holding a meeting for worship twice a week, and that they had lately built a new meeting house. The minutes show that "after deliberate consideration' the Hopewell Meeting moved to recommend to the Quarterly Meeting that Crooked Run be established as a meeting for worship twice a week.

        On June 1, 1758 Thomas Branson had leased to John Painter a four acre tract of ground for the period of ninety-nine years with the stipulation that it was to be used for a Friends meeting house and burying ground and for no other purpose. How long the meeting house stood here is not known, but the Hopewell records show that in 1810 the Crooked Run meeting was 'laid down' so few Friends attending. By this time the great western migration was under way, and the removal of many names of members who had left the community. Other denominations were also making in roads on the membership, and numerous persons were put out for 'marrying out of meeting', i.e. marrying outside the Quaker faith. The Friends had very strict rules which were rigidly observed, and a member could be expelled for such offenses as joining the militia, scouting after Indians, absence from meeting, holding slaves, fiddling and dancing, speaking falsely, hitting a man and singing.

        Records show that there was a schoolhouse on the lot of the Crooked Run Meeting and in 1817 Samuel Swayne and Amos Lupton were appointed trustees with liberty to rent out the property and to apply the proceeds toward repairing the graveyard and buildings. Records show the meeting house still standing in 1828 but in a bad state of repair.

        The 99-year lease expired in 1857 and ten years later the Winchester Presbytery appointed a committee to organize a Presbyterian Church at White Post. After the service on March 30, 1867 seven persons from Nineveh presented their certificates and Dr. William Sommerville was elected elder. From these seven charter members the present Nineveh congregation developed. Having no church building of their own, they met for fourteen years in the Main Street church of the Front Royal Methodists, (site of the Royal Quality Shop), and supported with the Methodists a union Sunday School.

        In 1881 pastoral relations with Berryville were dissolved and the White Post church was transferred to the Front Royal charge. At that time it was suggested that all the members of the Front Royal church living north of the Shenandoah River unite with members of the White Post charge and establish a central meeting place at Nineveh.

        With eighteen members from the Front Royal church and thirteen from White Post the congregation began to hold services in the Mt. Zion Baptist Church at Nineveh. On July 1, 1892 John M. Bierer, Henry C. Hoskins, and Frank McKay trustees for the Presbyterian Religious Society at Nineveh, took title to the lot of the Crooked Run Meeting. The deed made by Magnus C. Leach and wife, who had acquired the land from the estate of Elizabeth Neville, called for two acres of ground, the Quaker graveyard having been reserved by descendants of those who are buried there. It is still maintained as a family graveyard.

        In 1893 the first Presbyterian chapel was built. When it burned in 1913 the congregation met with the Mount Zion Baptists until a new building could be erected. During this period the Presbyterians had the good fortune to receive by gift an organ for their chapel, and the amicable relationship which existed between the two denominations is illustrated by the fact that, although disapproving of the use of instrumental music in the church, the Old School Baptists permitted the Presbyterians to install their new organ temporarily at Mount Zion. In those days it was customary for members of both churches to attend one anothers services, since each congregation met there on alternate Sundays. The story is told of one Baptist gentleman who attended Presbyterian meetings regularly, but always rose from his seat and departed as soon as the organist began to play.

     The pastor of the Nineveh Presbyterian Church is the Rev. Dr. Paul F. Reigner. We are grateful to Mrs. J. Miller Jett, Mrs. William C. Trenary and Keith Monnington for their assistance in obtaining the information for this article.