St. Luke's Episcopal Church

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, built in 1926, emerged from a Reconstruction-era mission school and chapel for African Americans known as Trinity. Mary McFarland Jennings, born into slavery nearby ca. 1823 and sent to the North by her white father, had returned to Lunenburg Co. and established Trinity in the 1870s in the now-vanished community of McFarland’s. Her successors moved the mission to Kenbridge and bought land here in 1921 for a new church to be called St. Luke’s. Among its trustees was the Rev. James Solomon Russell, prominent Episcopal priest and educator. The church served as a temporary classroom when local segregated schools were overcrowded in 1961. St. Luke’s closed in 2021.

Department of Historic Resources, 2022