Longs Chapel, also known as Old Athens Church and Athens Colored School, is a historic

Church of the United Brethren in Christ The Church of the United Brethren in Christ is an evangelical Christian denomination with churches in 17 countries. It is Protestant, with an episcopal structure and Arminian theology, with roots in the Mennonite and German Reformed communiti ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

and

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

located at Zenda near Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Virginia. It was built about 1871, and is a small, one-story, frame structure with a standard gable-fronted nave form with weatherboard siding, metal roofing, stone foundation piers, a small belfry, and an apse added about 1900. It measures approximately 20 feet by 30 feet. The cemetery includes multiple grave depressions, fieldstone tombstones, and a number of professionally carved marble monuments. The church also housed a one-room school for African-American children where Harrisonburg educator Lucy F. Simms had her first teaching post in 1877. The school at Zenda closed in 1925 and the last services at Longs Chapel were held in the late 1920s. The building was subsequently used as a hay barn. The last burial was in 1935. an
''Accompanying four photos''
/ref> It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2006.

References

African-American history of Virginia Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Churches completed in 1871 Buildings and structures in Rockingham County, Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Rockingham County, Virginia {{RockinghamCountyVA-NRHP-stub