Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument

About this property

Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument is a historic church located at Manakin, Powhatan County, Virginia. The Huguenot Memorial Chapel and Monument are tangible reminders both of the largest Huguenot settlement in colonial America and of the ethnic heritage of Huguenot descendants. While intended primarily to commemorate the planting of French Protestant refugees at Manakin towne in the colony of Virginia in 1700, the chapel and monument have been invested by design, age, tradition and symbolic value with their own historical significance. A simple wood-frame country church in a modified Gothic Revival style, the chapel was erected in 1895 as Manakin Church, the fourth such building to serve King William Parish since its designation as a distinct religious center for French Protestant refugees in 1700. Notwithstanding the historic use of the building as a religious property and the building's careful removal from its original location to an adjacent site in order to preserve it as a Huguenot memorial, the chapel possesses historical and symbolic importance because it incorporates structural members which are believed to include the nation's oldest architectural fragment of a Huguenot building, because it stands on the glebe land and near the site of the first church of the French Protestant refugees of Manakin, and because it has served for more than fifty years as a focus of tradition associated with the historic identity of Huguenot descendants. Erected by the Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia, the monument is a light granite plinth displaying a Huguenot cross, Society insignia, and commemorative inscriptions that symbolize the values, ideas and cultural contributions valued by the generation that dedicated it to the memory of their Huguenot ancestors on April 18, 1937. The two properties are maintained in their historic wooded setting on "Huguenot Highway" by the Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia on land expressly acquired by the society for commemorative purposes. Manakin Huguenot Chapel is a simple wood-frame church erected in 1895 incorporating structural members believed to have been salvaged from the 1730 Huguenot church of King William Parish as well as a large summer beam believed to have survived from the 1710 Huguenot church at Manakin. The building is set off by its distinctive three-sided narthex and pointed side windows. Its present location is the chapel's third site, the building having first been built on or near the site of the present Manakin Episcopal Church and then moved about 200 feet to the south. The present site, towards the east of the second site, is still within a few hundred feet of the chapel's original location; its wooded surroundings maintain the integrity of its historic setting.

Location

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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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