The Slashes

Slash Church – not as in community center-slash-church, but Slash Church as the name of the place. On Mount Hermon Road, in Hanover. It is the oldest wood frame church in Virginia, where Patrick Henry once worshipped.

“Slash” because that is an old word for marshes. This part of Hanover County was half under water half of the year, a network of rivers and creeks and sinking land. Yesterday, as it turns out, was the anniversary of the Battle of Slash Church, as Confederates unsuccessfully fought back the Federals in 1862. I drove over to the church, which I had never seen. There is little evidence of historic significance, just a white wooden building with a newer brick building nearby.

Mount Hermon becomes Sliding Hill, my road, which ends at an excavated pet cemetery on Route 1. They’ve been removing the remains for the past few months; a restaurant will be built there. A lawyer for the restaurant company says the land is too marshy anyway for a cemetery – it is better to remove these beloved pets.

So they will build a fast-food restaurant on the site, and it will sink and settle like everything before it has, and the slashes will take back what it wants.