| The Stoney Point church, located five miles north of Arnoldsburg on Altizer Road was built some time after the Civil War, a primitive log structure.
The ground for the church site was given by George Gibson, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, and his wife Elizabeth Starcher, sometime after their marriage in 1865.
An early account says:
Silas Downs used his team to haul the logs from all about the community. Peter Booher was another who helped with the hauling. Renzin Smith also helped with the work, and men of the community worked together to erect the log structure.
Other men of the area who worked included George Lynch, Sr., Peter Mace, Sam Husk, James Price, Thomas Craddock, Adam Starcher, Henry Starcher, George Gibson, Sr., and Sam Gunn. Men also came from as far as Ripley, Jackson County, and Burning Springs, Wirt County, to help lay up the logs.
The log building was pulled down in 1922 and the present new church was erected and dedicated in 1923.
This second church was built by the people of the community, including C. C. Starcher, John and D. E. Whytsell, Will Starcher, Jack Kingsbury, George McCoy, George Lynch Jr., John Morgan, David Craddock, George Craddock, and Lovell Allen. Clarence Starcher and Arthur Morgan did the hauling of materials.
Mrs. Esther Gibson, second wife of George Gibson, Sr., said that her husband was sick and unable to help much with the work on the second church, but he did "strike the first lick toward building the new church."
Gibson died before the new church was completed, but his funeral was the first to be held in the incompleted church. She wrote this brief history of the two building several years ago.
The church is on a point overlooking the West Fork of the Little Kanawha, and has been closed for several years. |
