Date:  ca. 1907

Image Number:  Roll6Neg11A

Comments:  Scottsville Baptists built their red brick church high on Harrison Street in 1840 with property and funds donated by Anna Maria (Barclay) Moon and her husband, Edward Harris Moon.  Before the church was built, Anna held services for her family and slaves in her own home at Viewmont, near Carter's Bridge.  Interest in the Baptist religion grew in Scottsville, and in 1840 the local Baptists approached Anna, whose religious fervor was well known.  Her husband, Edward, was a Presbyterian, and his minister became disturbed about Edward's convictions and the growing Baptist activity.  As it turned out, his fears were well-grounded for Edward was baptized and became a member of the Scottsville Baptist Church as soon as it was organized.  He also contributed generously to the church building fund and donated a sofa and chairs from Viewmont to furnish the church pulpit.  The plan of the church included separate entrances for women and men and a slave gallery above the auditorium, both common features at that time.

Two of the first Baptist ministers were S.B. Rice (1842) and Joseph H. Fox (1845).  By 1849, the church had grown to 249 members of which 119 were white and 130 colored.  Notable members of the early Baptist congregation included the Moons' two daughters, Lottie and Oriana Moon.  Lottie Moon became a famous Baptist missionary to North China and translated the Bible into Chinese.  Dr. Oriana Moon graduated from medical school in 1957, and, a year later, she joined her uncle, Dr. James Turner Barclay, on his Disciples of Christ mission in Jerusalem.   Dr. Moon later married Dr. John S. Andrews and volunteered as a surgeon in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; she began work at Charlottesville General Hospital in July 1861.  After the Civil War, the Andrews ran a hospital at Old Hall on Scottsville's Harrison Street from 1882-1883.

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army impressed the Baptist Church as a hospital, and its first patients arrived on 24 June 1862.  Although the Church had space for only 20 patients with its one large ward and second floor gallery, it was part of the Confederate General Hospital complex in Scottsville, which consisted of four buildings and treated 2,236 soldiers in its nearly 16-month period of operation.

In the early 1900's, the Baptist congregation built a wide porch with four white pillars across the front of the Church as shown in this second Burgess postcard just above. The church was remodeled in 1930 to add a baptistry; until that remodeling, all baptisms had been performed in the James River or nearby streams.  During the 1930 remodeling, heating stoves were removed and central heat installed.  The photo to the immediate right shows this beautiful church in 2000.