Prior to 1785, church parishes served as local units of government, as well as religious and community organizations. In Colonial Virginia, parishes and their boundaries were established (and altered) by acts of the General Assembly. After the January 16, 1786, passage of Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom by the Virginia General Assembly, parishes continued to exist but were no longer official units of state government. Various parishes served the area that is now Pittsylvania County at different times, including Antrim, Cornwall, Cumberland, St. James, and Camden.
The Camden Parish of the Episcopal Church was formed in 1767, the same year as the county. [1] Initially, there were chapels at Snow Creek, [2,3] Potter’s Creek, [4] and at the home of William Heard. While no Polly ancestors are listed as vestrymen or church leaders, they likely attended. These were known as “chapels of ease,” church buildings other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot conveniently reach the parish church, generally due to travel distance. At a vestry meeting held at the Pittsylvania County Courthouse on 14 July 1769, it was ordered that a church be built near where the “Chappell (sic) now stands at Snow Creek.” [5]
The Snow Creek Chapel, also known as The Old Chapel Church and the Snow Creek Anglican Church, was built in 1769/1770 in what is now Franklin County, Virginia, but was then in northwest Pittsylvania County. It sits adjacent to what is believed to be part of the original Pigg River Road. Take Snow Creek Road (VA 890) south off of Rt. 40 for about ten miles, then left on Old Chapel Road to the church and cemetery on the left.
This church is significant to the Polley family because it was probably the closest parish to where David Polley lived along Reedies Creek, several miles east.
“Constructed of hewn and sawed timbers and erected on Virginia’s western frontier in present-day Franklin County at the end of the colonial period, the Snow Creek Anglican Church replaced an earlier chapel at the site. The second Snow Creek church was one of a half-dozen churches and chapels ordered built in 1769 by the vestry of the newly established Camden Parish, which was located on the fringe of white settlement in the southern Piedmont and the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1770, Anglican vestrymen paid two men 7,520 pounds of tobacco (approximately $50 today) for building the 32-by-24-foot structure. The Anglican Church vestry’s specifications for the building required it to have two doors and five windows, a clapboard roof, a plank floor, a pulpit and a reading desk, a small communion table, and benches to seat the congregation. After the American Revolution led to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the closure of most of its rural parishes, including Camden, the original Snow Creek congregation most likely disintegrated. By the late 1780s, the Baptists probably began using the building for worship. In 1824, a Primitive Baptist congregation occupied the church and continued to use it until the congregation died out by around 2000. The former Snow Creek Anglican Church is one of the oldest known buildings surviving in western Virginia. The property also includes a cemetery dating to around 1753, when the first Anglican chapel was built on the site. The church was fully restored in 2016.” [6] (with minor edits)
NOTES:[1] Marriage Bonds and Minister’s Returns of Pittsylvania County, Virginia 1767-1805, Compiled and published by Catherine Lindsay Knorr, 1956[2] Snow Creek empties into the Pigg River, approx. 2.7 miles south of the Rt. 40 & Armstrong Rd. intersection, Sandy Level, and about 6 miles SW of Reedies Creek. [3] More information can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chapel_Church [4] Potter Creek, also known as Potter’s Creek, flows north into the Pigg River and crosses Rt-40 west of present-day Climax Road and just east of Toshes Road. [5] The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, “Colonial Churches In Pittsylvania County,” Apr., 1914, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 173-176. Virginia Historical Society.[6] From https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/033-0135/
Updated April 7, 2026