Mathias Mennonite Church stands along Route 259 just south of Mathias, West Virginia — the result of three small Hardy County congregations coming together in the early 1970s. From the 1860s onward, Mennonites in this corner of the West Virginia highlands had gathered in scattered rural meetinghouses — Cullers Run, Mt. Hermon, and Buckhorn — close enough that families could walk to Sunday services. By the 1970s, paved roads and family automobiles made a centrally located church practical, and the three groups voted to merge.
The new building was dedicated on September 16, 1973. John F. Shank and Linden Wenger spoke in the morning, followed by a history of Mennonites in the Mathias area presented by Grace Showalter, a local historian and Eastern Mennonite College teacher whose mother had grown up in Mathias. David Augsburger preached the dedication sermon at the 2:00 p.m. service.
Harley and Irene Good provided leadership at Mathias from 1973 until 1990, and Lewis E. McDorman served as pastor from 1990 to 1995. The congregation is a member of the Virginia Mennonite Conference, sustaining a regional Mennonite presence that traces back through more than a century of Hardy County church work.
A fourth nearby congregation, Cove Mennonite Church — which met at the Whitmore Schoolhouse — did not initially join the new merger because of the travel distance. Cove eventually consolidated with Mathias in 1997, completing the union of the area’s Mennonite witness under one roof.
Visitors traveling to Mathias can pair a stop here with the restored Cullers Run Schoolhouse a few miles south, the former Buckhorn meetinghouse on Dove Hollow Road (now a vacation cabin), and the relocated Whitmore Schoolhouse now standing at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg — each a piece of the story that led to Mathias Mennonite Church today.