FaithInWV 175th Anniversary feature story:
Sweet Springs Chapel – A Monroe County Treasure
Faith and history are celebrated in Sweet Springs.
Each summer on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, faithful Catholics and visitors of Monroe County get together to honor Mary, local history, and pay tribute to the pioneering priests, religious figures, and ancestors who laid our spiritual foundation centuries ago for St. John the Evangelist Chapel in Sweet Springs, the oldest standing Catholic church in WV.
After the Mass everyone lingers to enjoy an old-fashioned ice cream social outside of the brick church that sits in a little vale surrounded shaded by tall trees that line the property.
Saint John the Evangelist Chapel was completed in the 1850s under the guidance of Fr. John Walters thanks to a generous gift from William Lewis and his wife Letitia Preston (Floyd) Lewis, daughter of Virginia’s Governor John Floyd (and brother to VA’s 31st Governor John B. Floyd from 1849-1852). Interesting fact, many Virginian’s thought of Letitia Lewis as the black sheep of the Floyd family for converting to Catholicism, a faith despised because of British Protestant Reformation and an assumed threat to political order. However, several others in her family and friends followed her lead and also professed the Catholic faith, those included her father the former governor, her mother, her sister, and in-laws.
While the chapel was initially used for the Floyd and Lewis families, it was later used also by Irish immigrants and former slaves working in the area for the railway, wealthy Virginia families, or at the Sweet Springs Resort. Records note St. John’s Chapel was established an official church in 1859.
Church sacramental books record the first baptism in 1853, an increase in the Catholic population with 174 baptisms in 1860, and proof that three soldiers were baptized in 1862 during the Civil War.
The diocese purchased the property in 1977 from the Lewis descendants and others. The chapel was restored and then rededicated by Bishop Joseph Hodges on April 17, 1983.
Former Pastor of St. John’s Chapel published Cloud of Witnesses
Father Harry Winter, O.M.I., who served in the southern region of West Virginia throughout the 1980s into 1991, published the book, Cloud of Witnesses – The Floyd-Lewis Chronicles. It showcases the history of the Floyd and Lewis families.
Cloud of Witnesses also highlights the family’s conversion to the Catholic faith and the prominent family’s influence on the Appalachian region.
Above the doors of St. John’s Chapel are the words, “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism.” This mantra was echoed in the promise made to Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Francis Schulte in 1986 to “faithfully maintain St. John’s Chapel, so that our Catholic faith may be witnessed in this Sweet Springs Valley.” The promise honors their ancestors and all who made the chapel possible as their “Cloud of Witnesses.”
This reference, just as the title of the book, is a compliment to Saint Paul’s writing – Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us* and persevere in running the race that lies before us….”
The great apostle is telling us that we need to have confidence as we run our race, because we are surrounded everyday by great prophets and saints who are cheering us on.
As we thank God for our cloud of witnesses include our ancestors who pioneered our Catholic communities in our home state.
Today, the chapel is part of the group of parishes in the Beckley Vicariate that includes St. Catherine of Siena in Ronceverte, St. Charles Borromeo in White Sulphur Springs, Chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Williamsburg, and St. Louis King of France Chapel in Lewisburg; all under the leadership of Rev. Msgr. Kevin M. Quirk, J.C.D.
