Providence Church in Louisa County is one of Virginia’s few remaining wood frame colonial churches and is among the first churches to be built in the central part of the state by the Presbyterians. The congregation was organized ca. 1747 under the aegis of Samuel Morris, an early dissenter; the church was put up that same year. The first minister was the Reverend Samuel Davies, the pulpit orator and founder of the Hanover Presbytery. Davies remained at Providence until 1759, when he left to assume the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). The severely plain weather-boarded building, in a clearing at the end of a wooded lane, has a typical early meetinghouse arrangement with side and end entrances and an original gallery extending around three sides of the interior. The English evangelist George Whitefield preached at the Providence Presbyterian Church ca. 1755.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia