Hopewell Presbyterian Church and Cemetery

Along Beatties Ford Road in northwest Mecklenburg County stands a brick Presbyterian church whose sanctuary was built in 1833-1835 and remodeled in 1859-1860 in the Greek Revival style. A 1928 two-story Sunday School addition extends across its north end, and a churchyard holds graves dating from 1775 onward. The congregation traces its organization to 1762, and the church was one of only a few brick rural Presbyterian churches in North Carolina built before the 1850s. The cemetery's thirty-six box and chest tombs with ledger tops form what is considered the largest collection of that type in a North Carolina churchyard, and eleven of the ledgers are signed by Charleston stone carvers. Pairs of stone walls built in 1928 and finished in 1931 line the road on both sides of the property. The church is also important for its links to the wealthy plantation families of the Catawba River Valley, including ministers and planters buried in the churchyard.