Pleasant Grove Church

Pleasant Grove Church

1896

Pleasant Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1882 with seven trustees: Samuel Sharper, John Willard, Elmead Sharper, William Sharper, William Hatcher, William Harris, and William Grayson. Initial services were held in Odrick’s School House, located at Spring Hill and Lewinsville Roads. After several years the trustees, in 1893, purchased an acre of land along Lewinsville Road from William A. Means for a church and adjacent cemetery. In 1896, members of the Pleasant Grove Church began worshipping in their newly built one-room church. The congregation merged with the William Watters Church in 1968, and services were discontinued at the Pleasant Grove Church. In 1980, the William Watters Church sold the vacant Pleasant Grove building and, the following year, merged with the Falls Church St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. Friends of Pleasant Grove organized shortly thereafter and saved the vacant structure. The Friends group ended up owning the Pleasant Grove Church building, but St. Luke’s United Methodist Church owned the ground beneath it and the adjacent cemetery. The white framed building remains today, and its basement is used for an African American museum.

Pleasant Grove Methodist Episcopal Church

8641 Lewinsville Road, McLean, VA 22102

Dranesville

In 2006, McLean & Great Falls Celebrate Virginia, an organization celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, marked the Pleasant Grove Church with a historic bronze plaque placed on the outside of the building.

1882

Photo by Carole L. Herrick