History: 

Some 17 miles west of Charlottesville on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Greenwood was once a flag stop on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad where the trains climbed upgrade past Afton and Waynesboro into the Shenandoah Valley. In the early 1850′s a small group of area residents began holding services in their homes and in the Baptist Church at Hillsboro. Construction began on Emmanuel Church in 1862.

With about fifteen persons giving thanks and saying prayers for peace, the first service was conducted by Reverend Dabney C. T. Davis on Christmas Day in 1863. The Davis family lived in a log parsonage nearby. Emmanuel Church was consecrated in 1867 by Bishop John John’s assistant, Bishop Whittle, who later described it to the Diocesan Council as being a “neat, comfortable and substantial building of brick, beautifully situated. Its completion in these times of pecuniary depression afford evidence of a healthy state of religion in the parish.”

In 1868 St. Paul’s – Ivy and Emmanuel – Greenwood joined forces under the same rector, an agreement that was to see both churches through the financially strapped reconstruction era and into the next century. Services were held at Emmanuel twice a month. By far the most famous and influential rector was the Rev. Frederick W. Neve, who came to Albemarle County in 1888 and remained until his death. He spent seventeen of those years (1888 – 1905) as rector for Greenwood Parish, and it was under his leadership that St. Georges Chapel was constructed in Crozet. Services were held there from 1899 to 1941. Today, a small altar and plaque at Emmanuel preserves St. George’s Chapel as a vital component of our church’s history.