Sinking Spring Cemetery

Sinking Spring Cemetery

Abingdon, Va.
History
Early Settlers
Religious Affiliation/ Presbyterian
Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church
Parson Charles Cummings
Sinking Spring Cemetery
Black's Fort

The Sinking Spring Cemetery marks the site of the first church building bearing the Sinking Spring name. Built as a front-log structure in the early 1700’s, it was supplanted by a larger building sometime in the 1780’s. This continued as the church site until 1831-1833 when the third building was built on Main Street and which building has now become the Barter Theater. In 1837 the church divided in the “new school – old school” controversy, part remaining at the Barter location and part moving out. The new school group moved and built Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church at the present location.

The group that moved built the fourth church structure at what is the present location of this church and dedicated it in 1851. This was the Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church. Built on the lines of the Greek rectangular plan of so many of the Presbyterian churches now found in the Valley of Virginia, it had a lovely, tall steeple over the front entrance. The two churches, weakened by the split of 1837 and the woes of war in 1861-65, were reunited here in a service held April 9, 1865, the same day of the surrender of General Lee to Grant at Appomattox. The Reverend James McChain, a “Yankee” preacher from upstate New York, pastor here from 1843-1869, saw both the new building here in 1851 and the reunification of the church before his death in 1869. Following the death of his first wife and first son after his arriving in Abingdon, Reverend McChain married Jane Cummings Gibson, who was the the granddaughter of Rev. Charles Cummings. After the war from 1865, the church seems to have prospered steadily and grown with the years. A manse was built about 1878-80 at 133 Valley, but has since been sold and renovated into a law office. The fifth and present sanctuary was dedicated here on the same site of the 1851 structure on December 21, 1890.

In 1972 the church on the corner of Main Street and Pecan Street was refurbished. Another Renovation was completed in 2004. The cabin built by Parson Cummings as his home, about two miles north of town on Route 19 and given to the Church by the Arthur Cummings family in 1968, was moved in 1971 to the Sinking Spring Cemetery. It is probably is the oldest church relic in this whole region from Roanoke to the Mississippi. It lives as a rugged reminder of the faith and courage of a hearty stock of people.

Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church

https://sinkingspring.org/about-us/our-history

William Stein, "Abingdon Walks"
https://archives-wcpl.net/Archive7_Appalachia/project/

1773-present

https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-02-WS13

Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church

"Call to Reverend Cummings"
A Bicentennial History of Washington County, Virginia 1776-1976
J. Allen Neal. Taylor Publ. Co, (1977), pp. 51-52

Landon Boyd marker by Virginia Civil War Trails
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=67292

Confederate General John Morgan Hunt marker; erected in 2017 by Morgan's Men Assoc.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=104883

Still image
Document
Website

Text

The Town of Abingdon has provided a map of the Sinking Spring Cemetery which includes a function for headstone identification. The Historical Society of Washington County, Va. offers access to the map online along with information about the annual "Evening With the Spirits" Tour which takes place in October.
Http://hswcv.org/news_and_events.php

Nearby: African American Cemetery (Landon Boyd's final resting place; Historical Society of Washington County, VA; Depot Square