Grace Church

About this property

Grace Church (sometimes called Grace Episcopal Church) is an Episcopal church in Cumberland County, Virginia. Designed by Dabney Cosby, a former assistant to Thomas Jefferson, it is the only substantial building remaining from the former community of Ca Ira, once a major tobacco exporting point on the Willis River, a tributary of the James River. Grace Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 30, 1980. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Ca Ira was a small farming community similar to many around Virginia. The Virginia General Assembly formally established the town in 1796; the origin of the name is unknown, but given the spirit of the times, and the fact that many Virginians admired the French Revolution, it is suspected to have been derived from a popular French song of the era, or the Democratic Republican party or because French Huguenots had arrived in the era, possible from the earlier settlement downriver on the James at Manakin Sabot. In 1801 Ca Ira had 300 residents and Craddoch Wisdom was the tobacco inspector at Dean's Warehouse (though he resided in 1804). Three decades later, in 1836, Ca Ira could be described as a post village: its population of 210 was served by forty dwellings, three stores, a mill, a tobacco warehouse, two taverns, and a Masonic hall. Despite the thriving tobacco economy, and the construction of the James River Canal to improve navigation on the James River (which required considerable annual maintenance because of debris washed down by and damage by frequent floods), river traffic would slow down and eventually vanish with the development of railroads before the Civil War. Construction of Grace Church was begun in 1840 by slaves of Col. Valentine The original deed to its location was described in the Cumberland County Deed Book of 1843 as a certain lot or parcel or ground adjoining the town of Ca Ira on the West, and bounded as follows. Orig. on the South by the Main road from Ca Ira to Buckingham Ct. House, West by the line separating it from McAshan's Old Stemmery Lot, on which the fence now runs North by the road leading into said stemmery and, East by the Western Crop Street of the town of Ca Ira, it being the lot, as now enclosed whereon the New Episcopal Church, called Grace Church, has been recently erected, containing about two thirds of an acre, together with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging. Upon completion, it served not only townspeople, but many prominent in local affairs who owned the surrounding plantations. Valentine Parrish not only donated the land on which it stood, but served as the builder for the project. The architect was Dabney Cosby, who had worked with Thomas Jefferson on the construction of buildings at the University of Virginia. This was not the first time that Cosby and Parrish had worked together; the two were listed together as co-architects on the cornerstone of the 1826 Goochland County Courthouse in nearby Goochland. Parrish was among the most prominent citizens in Cumberland County in the years leading up to the Civil War; he presented numerous petitions on the subject of local tolls to the Virginia General Assembly, and also made numerous suggestions regarding the distribution of economic aid to the county. Woodwork and framing on the church is said to have been the work of one Albert Mann, a slave attached to the Parrish plantation; construction of the church was overseen by Rev. Henry Kinckle.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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