St. John's Lutheran Church and Cemetery

St. John's Lutheran Church and Cemetery sits on an open hillside along U.S. Route 21 north of Wytheville. The congregation was organized in 1800 as a joint effort of Lutheran and German Reformed worshippers, and the present white frame church, measuring 55 by 45 feet, was built in 1854 on a high limestone basement. Its exposed roof structure follows German framing traditions found in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Inside are simple slip pews, a gallery on Greek Doric piers and a rail once used to separate men from women. The cemetery holds about thirty early nineteenth-century German-style monuments, most carved by Laurence Krone, the only early western Virginia carver known by name. His 1826 tomb for pastor George Flohr is among his best works. Together the church and gravestones form one of Virginia's most complete groups of German immigrant religious art. Regular services ended in 1924, and the church is now used once a year.