In 1792, Elder Benjamin Bowman moved from the Broadway area into a community of Brethren known as the Upper Linville Creek group, which had been developing over the previous decade. This small group grew together while they remained part of a larger congregation of Brethren in Lower Rockingham and Shenandoah counties until they organized separately in 1844.
The core group of this congregation built a stone meetinghouse in the Greenmount area in 1859. This building was replaced in 1898 by a frame meetinghouse which was destroyed by fire in 1946. The present brick meetinghouse was constructed in 1948.
The congregation continued to grow in the broader area around Greenmount through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even as their numbers grew beyond what one building could hold, they believed it was better to stay organized together for their witness and work. They built or acquired other buildings until in 1952 there were seven meetinghouses, each with smaller groups of members who continued to work together as one large congregation. This large group finally divided in the 1960s among their various meetinghouses, and the remaining Greenmount congregation has maintained its one meetinghouse since then.
The Greenmount congregation, which had previously been part of the Church of the Brethren, joined the Covenant Brethren Church in 2024.
Contributed by Jonathan B. Scarr
Sources
- Roger E. Sappington, The Brethren in Virginia (1973).