Like its sister site, “Lewinsville Presbyterian Church Before and During the Civil War,” this site presents the results of research in progress by Catherine E. “Cathy” Saunders. The research represents an intersection of my professional and personal interests: I am an Instructional Professor of English at George Mason University whose research focuses on the American antislavery movement, and I am also a longtime member and ordained ruling elder (past member of the elected governing board) of the congregation on which the project focuses, Lewinsville Presbyterian Church in McLean, Virginia.
I can be reached at the email address in the GMU faculty bio page linked above, or at cathy DOT saunders AT gmail DOT com.
Any views expressed here (implicitly via the selection of documents to be included and/or explicitly in item descriptions and other text) are my own; they should not be taken as representing the perspectives either of my employer or of other members, the pastors, or the staff of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church.
That said, I hope this project will become a collective endeavor, and I welcome volunteer transcribers, as well as suggestions and/or contributions of documents to be included. I would be especially interested in hearing from descendants of early Lewinsville members and/or the people they enslaved.
I am grateful to members, pastors, staff of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church for helping me think through the issues addressed in this research in a variety of formal and informal conversations, and to the Session (elected governing board) for granting me permission to digitize relevant documents in the church archives and to recruit transcribers using official church communication channels. I am especially grateful to earlier Lewinsville historians, including Rev. Franklin Gillespie, Frank Gapp, and Roland McElroy, who have located, preserved, and interpreted the available records of the congregation’s life, creating a firm foundation on which this project builds. While this project extends and to some extent revises earlier histories by focusing on the role of slavery and enslaved people in the church’s early history, it shares with earlier projects a belief that understanding our history can inform our sense of our present mission and help us discern, with God’s help, our way forward.
I also want to thank George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences for financial support in the form of a Spring 2025 study leave and Summer 2022 funding from the Center for Humanities Research .