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Gerrardstown- Apple Chapel
The year is 1784 and if you have three pounds you can buy a lottery ticket that may win you a building lot!
If you were a winner, you had two years to construct a house “not less than 20 feet across with a shingled roof and a stone or brick chimney”. This lottery was so widely popular that by 1787 not only did these 40 lots get sold, so did an additional 20.
By the early 1800’s the town of Gerrardstown included 2 taverns, 4 general stores, 2 tanneries, 2 blacksmiths, a wagon maker and a harness makers shop. Many of these businesses catered to travelers heading west along Mountain Road, a onetime Indian path that connected the North-South Valley road thru the Shenandoah to Back Creek Valley.
Gerrardstown prosperity began to decline as transportation emphasis changed from small roads to trains. That brought in wheat from the Midwest and lead to the decline of agriculture in the Shenandoah Valley.
There were 5 denominations of churches here and this site is one of the remaining buildings. The historic Southern Methodist Church, now called the Apple Chapel, is a contributing building in the Gerrardstown Historic District listed in 1991 on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Apple Chapel was originally erected in 1883 after the Civil War to accommodate Confederate Sympathizers, and has served many Sunday preachers, and witnessed weddings, funerals, public lectures, and other community events.
Architecturally the building can be described as Vernacular Gothic Revival. This quaint brick church has a limestone foundation, pointed arched door and window openings, a simple rectangular plan, a steeply pitched slate roof, and an airy wooden belfry.