Mt Jackson's Historic Union Church

The Union Church in Mt. Jackson  open to all, and free. Visitors are welcome anytime, but spring through October on weekends there are volunteers to show you around, and tell you something of the old church's history.

      Located in downtown Mt. Jackson, beside the Town Hall between Main Street (US 11) and King Street, the little brick church is the sort of place stressed-out people dream of.

Early 1800s Structure

      Built in the 1830s, it's nestled in a grove of old trees, with a cool breeze in semi-permanent residence during the summer. There's an old cemetery with 19th-century headstones for those who want to look for their Valley ancestors, and more genealogical material inside the church, of an entirely different nature.
      The old floors squeak slightly in places, and your footsteps resound a bit louder than our modern ears are used to. It takes a few moments to adjust to the silence, and to lose the sense of being an intruder.
      Inside is a single cool room, with white walls and brown wooden pews and no decoration except two candleholders hanging from the gallery overhang just inside the entrance.
      There's a simple altar at the back. Among the items on the altar is a simple, woven collection basket. There's no sign that says so, but the people of Mt. Jackson will take it kindly if you contribute to the upkeep of this tranquil place.

Open to all Denominations

      This is exactly the kind of church which most Americans worshipped in, back when the country was young, and some of the people in Mt. Jackson still worship here today. That's why it's called a Union church; because it's open for use by all denominations.
      Walk around the room, run your hand along the tops of the pews. Sit down and think about lazy things as long as you like. Even if you don't have a religious bone in your body, one restful hour in the peace and quiet of this place is worth 13 sessions with a shrink.
      It heals, in some indefinable way.
      It wasn't always a place of peace for everyone who entered. Even in this setting, some disquieting aspects of the Shenandoah Valley's turbulent history intrude.
      The first historic intrusion is a matter of architecture. A narrow gallery, or balcony, runs the length of the front. Such galleries in public places built during this ante-bellum period usually were reserved for "servants," which is the euphemism slaveowners used to describe their African-American human property. Later, when the Peculiar Institution fell out of favor, these church galleries came to be called "choir lofts," even among sects that allowed no choirs. We don't have the particulars on Union Church's balcony, but doubtless the volunteers at the front door can fill you in. In other buildings, we have heard these galleries described as places for children, or seating for women in sects which seated the sexes separately. As we said, we draw no conclusions about the original purpose of Union Church's gallery, but the probability still intrudes that once slaves sat there, receiving instruction in their owners' religion of brotherly love.

The Witnesses of War Still Speak to Us

      There were times, during the Civil War, when very uncivil things went on inside the Union Church. There's evidence of these goings-on on the walls, left in the second disquieting intrusion into this place of repose and refuge. Behind the altar, there's a large patch where the paint and top layer of wall covering has been peeled off, and several similar, smaller patches decorate the side walls. If you look more closely, you'll see that these patches contain writing, in lead pencil, with names and messages and dates from the Civil War years.
      During The War, Union Church was used as a barrack for Union troops, as the various Northern armies came and went through Mt. Jackson. Wounded probably were cared for here, too, since they were cared for in practically every structure that stood in Mt. Jackson in the years 1861-1865. We are told that several families have bloodstained floorboards or rugs from those terrible days, which they saved when buildings were torn down to make way for progress, and the owners wanted some concrete reminder of their part in the tragedy of our National Cataclysm.
      But whether wounded or passing through, soldiers stayed in Union Church for a night or a few days, and as soldiers have throughout history, they left their marks for posterity. Some are simple autographs and dates. Some are messages in the vein of "I slept here on my way to Richmond." There's one message, we are told, written by a woman who was begging for information about her missing soldier husband and other Mt. Jackson men who were lost in the maelstrom of war.
      If you have trouble thinking of the Civil War as a real, human event, go to Union Church and look at the writings. Try to read the names and the messages. Try to picture the grimy, hollow-eyed men in muddy uniforms, propping their muskets against the wall you are looking at, standing where you are standing, scrunched up against the wall, wetting a lead pencil on their tongue, and writing these time-machine messages to you.
      After they wrote their names on the walls of Union Church, some of them marched away to Sharpsburg, or Winchester, or Port Republic, or Gettysburg, and died.
      All that's left of them now is a grave somewhere, one among thousands upon thousands in a seldom-visited national cemetery, and a scribbled name on a wall.

A Memorial to Former Enemies

      The people of Mt. Jackson deserve our thanks and our praise for maintaining this shrine, not as a roped-off, static museum exhibit, but as a useful part of daily life in which the past and present mix freely, to the enrichment of both.

      It is somehow typical of the Civil War, and the confused, contradictory emotions it still evokes in us, that these men should be memorialized and immortalized by a church whose walls they defaced, and that a town which suffered terribly under their temporary domination should so painstakingly preserve their memories.

      They wrote on these walls because they wanted to be remembered, and as long as Union Church stands, there will always be at least one place on earth that still records their passing, and their humanity.

      If you want to feel the Civil War marching up your spine, go to Mt. Jackson's Union Church.

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