About

Orange County's Mount Calvary Baptist Church was built in 1892 during the era of segregation, but the founding African American congregation dates back decades earlier to the years just after the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery. The one-story, wood frame church is well-preserved and displays a vernacular adaptation of the Gothic Revival style. Mount Calvary emerged as a focal point of its surrounding community of Nasons, and the building reflects the growth and the need for social, spiritual, and educational self-fulfillment of the community's members. In this way, it is similar to hundreds of other Reconstruction-era churches in communities throughout Virginia and the South. At the time of its listing, Mount Calvary Baptist Church's congregation continued to include descendants of the original founders. Located directly across the road from the church is an affiliated cemetery, containing roughly 100 headstones with burials that date from the late 1920s to the present.