Virtual church connects with past

I went to church on Sunday, sort of. I have admitted within these pages that I’m not the most religious guy you’ll ever meet, but I had a chance to sit in on a service, my first in two about two years, under circumstances that would not have taken place, but for the COVID-19 Virus.

My ancestral home is in the remote, rural mountains of West Virginia, settled long ago by

Scots-Irish immigrants. It’s a place where remnants of old English morphed into a unique mountain dialect, some of which still survives today; Where old Celtic melodies transformed into the original country music. It’s the good kind. Call it bluegrass or roots music, but it’s not that Nashville stuff. It is a unique place, and the mountainous terrain kept it so isolated that it retained that culture well into the first half of the twentieth century.

When we think of the Irish diaspora, the potato famine of the 1840s is usually the first migration to come to mind, but there was an earlier mass migration to colonial America. The primary motivation for the first migration was not hunger, but a thirst for religious freedom, helped along by the suffocating feudal landlord system that was prevalent in Europe at the time.

Led by an initial wave of Scottish Presbyterians, Irish, English and Scottish protestants of all stripes chose to resettle in the mid-Atlantic colonies rather than be forced into the Church of England. They initially settled from eastern Pennsylvania down through the Virginia Tidewater area, but they also spread north through New York to Boston. The majority of the migration lasted through the first two decades of the 18th century and during that time, the formerly island-dwelling people tended to cling to the Atlantic coast.

Until the mid-1740s, Virginia territories only extended as far west as the Appalachian mountain range. The hills themselves and lands beyond were by treaty, the property of various native tribes. As the tribes migrated west, and Virginia Colonials became interested in furs and other natural resources that the Appalachians had to offer, new treaties were signed, purchases were made, and other lands were acquired by less honorable means, but the European settlers from a variety of backgrounds began populating the mountains.

During the American Revolution, the area remained sparsely populated and was only subject to the occasional “frontier” skirmish, but one hundred years later, the region played a pivotal role in the Civil War by seceding from Confederate Virginia to remain with the Union, creating the state of West Virginia. Tensions had simmered for decades between the wealthy slave-holding planters of the eastern plains and the smaller mountain farms that relied on family labor. The formation of a separate state had been considered before but had always been voted down in the legislature by the eastern majority, so when Virginia seceded from the Union, western Virginians saw their chance to separate and took it.

I have never lived in West Virginia, but I visited with my family several times as a youth seeing family in Charleston and other parts of the state. It was only once, about 40 years ago, that my father took me to the family home place where I saw a graveyard full of old, old headstones with rows upon rows of O’Dells. As a kid who had been moved around from one Air Force Base to another my whole life, it was an amazing sight. I had never felt so rooted. I haven’t since.

It’s with that memory in mind that I occasionally troll the net in search of information about my family home at Mount Nebo, West Virginia. A few years ago, I was pleased to find that the same church I had visited so many years ago, Gilgal Methodist Church, had a Facebook page. I elected to follow the page without hesitation, but never heard anything from them and quite frankly, had forgotten all about it.

Sunday morning, while channel surfing the talking-head-interview-spin shows (Did you know there are differences of opinion on how to handle the virus situation?), I received a notification on my tablet device inviting me to a “watch party” at Gilgal Methodist Church. I was more than delighted to click in and found myself watching their Sunday morning services. I logged on just in time for the prayer requests, so I was immediately treated to a few tidbits of news on the mountain as well. I learned who was in the hospital, and who had a bad fall, and who was on the mend. It was nice.

The choir seats behind the pastor were empty, and he seemed to sing the songs alone. There was obviously an organist off-camera, and I would presume there was someone behind the camera as well. Covid-19 had emptied the Church, but it added me, and I was able to spend my Sunday morning with the church where my people gathered, and were married and buried a century ago. Behind the pulpit, through the stained glass window and in the yard below, lie my Great Grandparents, William O’Dell (1881-1955) and Martha O’Dell (1888-1956) and William’s parents, my Great Great Grandparents Tobias O’Dell (1841-1917) and Susan O’Dell (1848-1906), as well as older unmarked graves, and many, many O’Dell and McClung cousins.

Though the virus may have thrust us into difficult and awkward times, there are the occasional silver linings. On Sunday, I had mine. I hope you find yours.