Churches of Cunningham Chapel Parish

Cunningham Chapel Parish grew out of Frederick Parish which was created concurrently with Frederick County in 1738 by an act of the colonial General Assembly of Virginia as an ecclesiastical unit of the Church of England. Cunningham Chapel was the first of three chapels of the parish. It was probably constructed in 1747, at a location three miles south of present day Berryville. The original log building was replaced by a stone structure, Old Chapel, that still stands today at a site near the present intersection of US Route 340 and VA Route 255.

In 1832, we outgrew our chapel known as "Old Chapel" and built Christ Church in the village of Millwood. During this period, nearly every Episcopal church from the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley into what is now West Virginia was established by the Rt. Rev. William Meade, third Bishop of Virginia, and fifth rector of our parish. At that time, the parish was named "Frederick," for the county from which it was formed in 1733. One of our many missions, Christ Church in Winchester, requested the Frederick Parish name when it became independent, and we gave it to them, renaming ourselves Cunningham Chapel Parish.

When the railroad came through the town of Boyce (then called "Boyceville") at the end of the 19th century, the parish built Emanuel Chapel in 1912 at the crossroads of what is now US 340 and VA Route 723 to serve the thriving new railroad community of Boyce. In June 2010, the property was deconsecrated and sold and is no longer affiliated with Cunningham Chapel Parish.

Ministers of the Parish

William Meldrum
(Frederick Parish)
1761 - 1765
Benjamin Sebastian
(Frederick Parish)
1767 - 1768
Charles Mynn Thruston
(Frederick Parish)
1769 - 1775
Alexander Balmaine
(Frederick Parish)
1785 - 1820
William Meade
(3rd Bishop of Virginia)
1811 - 1835
Horace Stringfellow 1835 - 1840
William G.H. Jones 1840 - 1847
John Francis Hoff 1847 - 1858
Joseph Ravenscroft Jones 1858 - 1881
C. Braxton Bryan 1881 - 1891
John Poyntz Tyler 1891 - 1895
J. Courtney Jones 1896 - 1903
Edward H. Ingle 1903 - 1905
John Maxwell Robeson 1906 - 1915
B. Duvall Chambers 1916 - 1934
Robert A. Goodwin 1934 - 1940
Claudius P. Shelton 1941 - 1942
G. Peyton Craighill 1943 - 1949
Francis B. Rhein 1949 - 1954
James L.B. Williams 1954 - 1958
Frank Q. Cayce 1959 - 1965
Holland B. Clark 1966 - 1974
E. Guthrie Brown 1974 - 1985
William L. Martin 1986 - 1989
James Montgomery 1990 - 1991
Peter R. Gustin 1991 - 2002
C. Thomas Holliday 2003 - 2005
Anne Leslie Yount Manson 2006 - 2010
Karin Chambers MacPhail 2011 - 2015
Matthew W. Rhodes 2017 - 2021
Melanie K. Lewis 2022 - Present

Christ Church, Millwood today...

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