Friends of Pleasant Vale Church is a charitable corporation, with a 501(c)(3) tax exemption, organized and devoted to the restoration, preservation and protection of a 180 year old Baptist church property in the Virginia Piedmont near Scuffleburg.  Since 1845, Pleasant Vale Baptist Church has served our community as a gathering place and a house of prayer.  It is our goal to assure that the church building and grounds are restored, are stabilized, and are used in the future in a manner consistent with the public interest.  [To that end, we are seeking your financial support directly or through Go Fund Me.]

Records surrounding the early years of the Pleasant Vale congregation have been located but have not been secured or researched completely.  Nevertheless, we believe we are able to describe the early years with reasonable accuracy.  One of our goals is to continue to gather historical material surrounding the congregation and establish a reliable description of that history.

 We know that in the early part of the 19th century owners of farms around Scuffleburg had worshipped as a separate Baptist congregation in a shared church building nearby.  In the early 1840s, those families decided to build a new church building near their homes and move their congregation to that new location.  It was a true community effort with neighbors sharing the financial burden and making whatever contributions they could.  Property was donated, funds were raised, and construction began. The building was completed and consecrated in 1845.

Services were conducted at Pleasant Vale over the succeeding decades regularly attended by descendants of European immigrants and by free and enslaved people of African descent.  

 During the Civil War, the church building was used by both sides as a hospital and for shelter, and possession of it was actively contested by both sides.  Mosby’s Rangers were very active in this area throughout the war, and members of that unit lived at nearby farms as family members or as boarders.

 The Pleasant Vale congregation continued to be active well into the twentieth century with services conducted each week and neighborhood gatherings held on a regular basis.  Interest declined as the new century approached and by 2000, services were held irregularly and the size of the congregation declined. 

Although church activities became less frequent, neighborhood devotion to the church property did not diminish.  As it became more and more clear that interest in regular services was diminishing, the neighbors joined together to acquire the property and begin the preservation and protection effort.  That effort continues today.

As noted, Friends of Pleasant Vale Church is a corporation with a section 501(c)(3) tax exemption.  The corporation is managed by a group of neighbors who serve as volunteer officers and directors.  They are:

President

John L. Richardson

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Vice President

Carol Terwilliger

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Treasurer

Butter Strother

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Secretary

Laurie Fenton Ambrose

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Dick McCarty

All officers welcome expressions of interest in Pleasant Vale, and encourage all inquiries.