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The Northern Neck's White Marsh United Methodist Church, which recently closed after 210 years, didn't change much
A state historic marker on State Route 3 in Lancaster County proclaims White Marsh Church to be 'the mother of Methodism in the Northern Neck' and cites 1792 as the founding date of the institution. Declining attendance recently forced officials to close the church.
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Second in a series on the struggles of two small, rural churches.
Yesterday: The end of White Marsh
Today: An 'agonizing' decision
WHITE MARSH CHURCH remains nearly the same as when it was built in 1848, except for a small addition with bathrooms added in the 1950s.
Growth, remodeling and expansions have altered many churches of similar age and style, but such growth never came to White Marsh.
Suggestions of its decline go back to 1935, when a writer in the Richmond Christian Advocate said of White Marsh, "A great many other churches have formed from this old church, which has greatly weakened her."
In 1967, a bulletin for a homecoming service explained that White Marsh had thrived up until World War I, but the passing of the steamboat and the building of new roads and bridges had opened up a "world tremendously changed" to this once-isolated peninsula.
"From World War I, the decline started. Our young people when they become of age leave and go elsewhere to pursue a livelihood," the bulletin reported.
"At the present, we have a membership of 82 with an average church attendance of 30. We hope for a new day at White Marsh when more people will move into our area."
By 1995, membership had shrunk to 67. The average attendance at the week's worship service was 15.
In 2001, White Marsh reported 54 members to the Virginia Conference. Average Sunday attendance was 12.
There were no new members, no transfers from other churches, no baptisms, no leaders, no children, no Sunday School, no choir, and no members of the United Methodist Men, Women or Youth Fellowship.
After that report was compiled, church leaders studied membership rolls and deleted 29 people who had moved away or hadn't been heard from in years.
Rudy L. Smith is superintendent for the Virginia Conference's Rappahannock District, which encompasses 62 churches on the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula. A minister for 33 years before becoming superintendent two years ago, Smith explains his job as "pastor to the pastors."
"I supervise them and make appointments. In that sense, I'm more like a boss than a pastor. The church is more than a business, but we have to use good managerial and business skills."
The problems at White Marsh United Methodist Church challenged all of Smith's skills.
"Some small churches seem to be doing well even in the midst of their smallness," Smith said. "But at White Marsh, there were only a couple of people to fill all the jobs. The financial resources weren't there, and there was no kind of mission. They were struggling and could no longer function as a church.
"It makes me very sad because, as a pastor, all my life I have wanted churches to grow and thrive."
Charles H. Callaway was chairman of White Marsh's board of trustees and his wife, Vivian, was church treasurer. Smith said he began meeting with the Callaways and member Margaret Jett last September to talk about the straits White Marsh was in.
"When I began meeting with the church, it was not with the idea that the church was going to close. I kept hoping that during that year something would happen, that more commitment would arise," Smith said.
After talking with Smith, Callaway sent an appeal for funds Oct. 1 to members and friends of White Marsh, explaining that the church had depleted its savings and was in danger of closing.
A similar appeal was sent in 1995, when the church's savings of $1,200 was being depleted by about $250 a month. It worked then, but the response last fall, Callaway said, was "not very much."
By the beginning of this year, Smith said, "it was apparent we had to do something." In January, he told eight members meeting at the church that White Marsh might have to close in June.
The members asked if the church could remain open with a lay leader or retired minister in charge. White Marsh might be able to make it, they reasoned, if the church Marsh did not have to pay its share of Pastor John Biondolillo's salary, insurance, retirement and expenses.
Smith took the question to the bishop, but the answer was no.
At an April meeting attended by seven members of the church, Smith discussed the mechanics of closing. The Methodist church was not interested in maintaining cemeteries, he explained, so White Marsh's graveyard needed to be conveyed to a new entity.
In May, Smith took White Marsh's problems to a meeting of the cabinet of the Virginia Conference, which consists of the bishop and the 18 district superintendents. They approved the plan to close the church and divide its building and 0.83-acre lot from the 2.4 acres of the cemetery.
The cemetery and its $38,000 trust fund would be conveyed to a trust. The church would be closed and conveyed to the District Board of Missions for disposition.
At a May 23 meeting, Smith and District Lay Leader Gordon A. Wilkins, a Warsaw lawyer, presented a resolution for the division and disposal of the White Marsh real estate. Lois H. Dawson, the wife of White Marsh member Larry Dawson, volunteered to take minutes.
Smith and Wilkins were battered with questions. Why must the church close? What could be done to keep it open? What would happen to the church if it were sold? Could its members buy it?
One member pointed out that the meeting had not been properly called; notice had not been published in the church bulletin for two weeks as required by church regulations.
Wilkins told one woman she had no right to speak because she wasn't a church member. Smith tried to close the meeting because, "there were people in the meeting that should not be there," according to Lois Dawson's minutes.
According to those minutes, a White Marsh member "attempted to ask a question and Rev. Smith stated DISMISSED!" Lois Dawson said when Smith found out she was a Baptist, he told her to tear up the minutes.
The June 6 meeting was properly advertised in the bulletin. But when it convened, Smith asked a Kilmarnock newspaper reporter who had been invited by a White Marsh member to leave. The district superintendent said he found the reporter's actions "underhanded."
Eventually, nine of the 12 White Marsh members in attendance voted 7-2 to approve the division and conveyance of the real estate.
On June 12, Smith sent a letter to White Marsh's members saying the church would close July 1. He called the decision "agonizing," but wrote that the church was no longer strong enough to support the Methodist ministry.
Smith said the District Board of Missions, which he chairs, will first offer the old church to Kilmarnock Methodist or Bethel Methodist at Lively--both strong, 300-member churches nearby.
If they are not interested, he said the property may be offered to an historical organization such as the Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library at Lancaster Court House. Lancaster County might also be interested in the building as a meeting room for the Board of Supervisors, a county official said.
Twenty-four of White Marsh's members have signed a petition to reopen the church. Some have hired a lawyer "to ask some questions" of Methodist officials about the closing.
Since White Marsh closed, its members have been attending other Methodist churches. They came together June 30 for the last time as the congregation of White Marsh United Methodist Church. Its old pews were filled.
"If we'd had a crowd like that every Sunday, we could have kept going," said 90-year-old C.E. Thomas, a longtime member.
Smith preached the final service. Biondolillo's assignment to White Marsh had technically ended the week before.
"It felt like a funeral service," Smith said, "but it was important to remember all White Marsh meant to its families, friends and community. Even though it was a very sad time and the church had closed, I tried to talk about all that White Marsh had contributed to the Northern Neck and the Methodist movement."
The congregation sang "The Old Rugged Cross," "In the Garden" and "How Great Thou Art." They prayed The Lord's Prayer and took Communion. And they prayed this Litany of Thanksgiving:
Blessed be the name of God whose word has been proclaimed in this place;
As generations have prayed prayers and sung your praises here, your spirit has blessed countless worshippers;
As the Lord's Supper has been celebrated here, your people have been nurtured by it;
Believers have confessed faith in Christ here and have been baptized in that faith;
The dead have been mourned and the hope of the resurrection proclaimed in this place;
New families have been created through marriage at this altar;
From within these walls persons have gone out to serve you in the world;
Today as we go forth from this house into a further journey of faith,
We give you thanks, O God, and pray for your guiding presence always in our lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
On July 16, Smith flew to Russia with six other members of the Virginia Conference to help the people there build two new Methodist churches.
A roadside historical marker and most members of White Marsh United Methodist Church proudly refer to it as "the mother church of Methodism in the Northern Neck."
In 1792, the nearly 800 Methodists in the lower peninsula paid 5 shillings for an acre on which they built a frame meetinghouse, which may have been where Bishop Francis Asbury preached on his last visit to the Northern Neck three years later.
That building was replaced in 1848 by the brick White Marsh Methodist Episcopal Church.
Three Methodist bishops, Enoch George (circa 1768-1828), David Seth Dogget (1809-1880) and William B. Beauchamp (1861-1931), are believed to have had connections there.
Carolyn H. Jett, author of a forthcoming history of Lancaster County and historian of the Methodists' Rappahannock District, said White Marsh's boast of being a mother church is not quite accurate.
"White Marsh is certainly the oldest Methodist church in Lancaster County, but other Methodist churches in the Northern Neck are just as old or older.
"And all of them were created by circuit riders," she said. "None of the early Methodist churches were started by a portion of one congregation moving to another location, as frequently happened in Baptist churches."
White Marsh's claim to Bishop George is also tenuous. According to an article in the 2001 Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Magazine by Doris M. Davison, Enoch George was born in Lancaster County near the church, but he and his family moved to Dinwiddie County when he was just an infant.
"There is, however, little doubt that David Dogget was associated with White Marsh. It is likely his parents helped found the church," Jett said. "And, although Bishop Beauchamp was born in Richmond County, he attended services at White Marsh in his youth and preached his last sermon there shortly before his death in 1931."
