Wending down these little country lanes among fields, and woods, and meadows, it's a kind of joy to come upon this little white church with its old cemetery. In this heavily Scotch-Irish countryside, you know before looking that it's Presbyterian.
It's a pleasant spot, hushed and serene, though it shows all the tell-tale signs of a neglected place. The lawns are mowed, but the sign is barely legible, and there's a general air of disuse. A lot of rural churches will be completely out of business within a decade, though I find online that this congregation disaffiliated with the original Presbyterian Church in order to join a fundamentalist splinter sect that's intolerant of female clergy and gays. Is that anything like the "Seceder Church" named in the post below? If so, this seems to be seceder country.
There's a stateliness to many of the buildings down in Washington County. This old house is in the town of Prosperity.
Look closely to see in this photo one of the county's 23 covered bridges. I could see disappearing to a place like this...if not for all the seceders....
I thought I could find the Western PA Conservancy's Enlow Fork site by memory. I was wrong. But I did end up finding the body of water known as Enlow Fork, with Washington County on this side and Greene on the far side. The bridge to the Conservancy site has been out for years, and I don't know any other way to get there, so I just meandered and went home via West Virginia.
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