Wesley's Chapel Arbor and Cemetery

Wesley's Chapel is a rural Methodist complex on a hillside near Blackburn in Catawba County, North Carolina. It includes a large open camp meeting arbor built around 1890, a cemetery said to date from the 1840s, and a church built in 1902 and brick veneered in 1948. The arbor has a broad hipped roof, heavy circular sawn timbers and simple pews, and it is one of few such arbors left in the state. It recalls the camp meeting tradition that spread across the southeast in the nineteenth century. The congregation began forming around 1824 and was largely of German ancestry. The cemetery holds carved gravestones from the 1850s and 1860s, many made by the Caveny-Crawford Workshop of York County, South Carolina, with stars, vines and T-shaped tops. Because the church was so heavily altered, only the arbor and cemetery count as contributing resources. Together they link the site to the era of the Great Revival and to the blending of German culture with Methodist faith.