Polegreen Church

From Virginia’s founding until the American Revolution 170 years later, the Anglican Church was the only state recognized religion, with churches and parsonages built by the government and clergy paid with tax money, while other religious groups were discouraged, suppressed, and harassed. The Great Awakening reached the middle colonies in 1739 when British evangelist George Whitefield preached in Williamsburg, inspiring Hanover County brick mason Samuel Morris and others to withdraw from Anglican worship and gather in his home on Sundays to read the Bible and religious tracts on reformation. By 1743 this dissenter movement had established four congregations known as the Morris Reading Houses, including the one on this site, built on Morris’ land and named for George Polegreen, who had received the land patent in the prior century. In July 1743, William “One Eye” Robinson, an itinerant minister, preached the county’s first Presbyterian sermon here and sent the congregation’s offering to Samuel Davies, then studying for the ministry in Pennsylvania. In April 1747 Davies came to Virginia to thank the dissenters for their gift, traveled first to Williamsburg, and by petition became the first non-Anglican minister licensed by the Governor’s Council. One year later he became pastor of the four dissenter congregations, and Patrick Henry worshipped here with his mother during Davies’ tenure. On December 4, 1755, the Hanover Presbytery, now the Presbytery of the James, held its first meeting at Polegreen. Davies later left in 1759 to become president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. Patrick Henry, born in Hanover County in 1736, became a leading Virginia statesman, won early fame as a lawyer in the Parsons’ Cause at Hanover Courthouse in 1763, and in 1765 set out basic principles of the American Revolution in his resolutions against the Stamp Act. Best known for declaring “Give me liberty or give me death” at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775, he helped move colonists toward independence, served 26 years in the Virginia legislature and five terms as governor, helped draft the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and its Declaration of Rights, and strongly influenced the creation of the Bill of Rights as a leading critic of the U.S. Constitution.

Virginia · United States