Appalachian Community Histories – Antioch Church, Scott County: Quillin Land, Cemetery Memory, and Rural Life Near Gate City
Antioch is not remembered in Scott County as a town with a charter, courthouse, or busy main street. It appears more clearly in the record as a church place, a family gathering place, and a rural neighborhood marker east of Gate City. The Quillin Clan Association identifies Antioch Church at 2402 Nickelsville Highway, near Antioch Circle, about three miles east of Gate City. That location places Antioch in the kind of Scott County landscape where churches, cemeteries, family farms, and roads often carried a community name long after any store, school, or post office faded from common use.
That pattern fits Scott County history. The county was formed on November 24, 1814, from parts of Washington, Lee, and Russell Counties, and the county’s own early history notes that people usually settled on smoother ground near streams and ridges rather than in the steepest country. Roads, creek valleys, churches, and family landholdings became the framework of local identity. Antioch belongs to that kind of map. It is a place best understood through land, worship, kinship, and memory.
Quillin Land and the Methodist Church
The most important lead in Antioch’s history is the Quillin family connection. The Quillin Clan Association states that John D. Quillin donated the Antioch Church site to the Methodist Church on September 11, 1867. That date matters because it places Antioch in the immediate post-Civil War years, when communities across Appalachia were rebuilding churches, reorganizing families, and recording land transfers in county deed books.
The deed itself should be checked in Scott County land records, especially Deed Book No. 14, covering 1866 through 1870. The Library of Virginia’s Scott County microfilm guide lists that volume, along with deed indexes beginning in the early county period. The same guide also points researchers toward minute books, will books, marriage records, ministers’ returns, and other county records that can help explain the families and trustees around Antioch.
That is the way a place like Antioch comes into focus. A single family tradition gives the story a date and a donor. The deed books can confirm the legal transfer. The will books can show how Quillin land moved through generations. The marriage records and ministers’ returns can identify religious networks. The cemetery can place names in the ground. Antioch’s history is not hidden so much as scattered across the ordinary records of rural life.
The Quillin Family and a Scott County Gathering Place
The Quillin name remained tied to Antioch long after the 1867 church site tradition. By the twentieth century, Antioch Church had become the annual meeting place of the Quillin Clan. The Quillin Clan Association says the reunion has met there since 1938, and newspaper records support the early growth of that tradition. On August 8, 1940, the Gate City Herald reported that the Quillin clan would hold its third reunion at Antioch in Scott County on Sunday, August 25.
That 1940 notice is small, but it is important. It shows Antioch not only as an old church site, but as a place where descendants returned to remember their family and county roots. The reunion was still appearing in newspapers in later decades. In 1951, the Gate City Herald carried a notice for the annual Quillen reunion at Antioch Church on Nickelsville Road. In 1960, the same paper again noted the annual Quillen reunion at Antioch Church.
The spelling shifts between Quillin and Quillen in newspapers and family records, which is common in older Appalachian sources. The continuity is clearer than the spelling. The same family, the same church ground, the same road, and the same annual return made Antioch a living place of memory.
Church, Community, and Daily Life
Antioch’s record is not only a reunion story. Mid-twentieth-century newspapers also show Antioch as a rural community with everyday social life. The Scott County News reported an Antioch Home Demonstration Club meeting in January 1954, while the Gate City Herald mentioned Antioch Home Demonstration Club meetings in the early 1950s. These references matter because Home Demonstration Clubs were important parts of rural women’s education, household economy, food preservation, sewing, health, and neighborhood organization.
That kind of notice gives Antioch a fuller history. A place is not only old because a deed says so. It is old because people gathered there, met there, cooked there, mourned there, sang there, and marked the calendar by church services, club meetings, funerals, and reunions. Antioch Church stood at the center of those overlapping circles.
A 1958 Bristol Virginia-Tennessean item referencing Antioch Methodist Church of Scott County also points toward the church’s role in death, burial, and remembrance. Funeral and obituary notices often preserve community connections that do not appear in formal histories. They show where people belonged, where families gathered, and which churches carried the emotional weight of a neighborhood.
The Cemetery Across from the Church
Across from Antioch Church is another part of the story: Quillin Cemetery. Cemetery records and transcriptions identify graves connected to the Quillin family and nearby kinship lines. For a rural Appalachian community, the cemetery is often as important as the church building. It preserves names that may not appear in published histories, and it gives the church ground a deeper family geography.
The cemetery should be checked against original markers, death records, obituaries, and deeds. Still, the relationship between Antioch Church and Quillin Cemetery strengthens the main interpretation of the place. Antioch was not only a worship site. It was a family landmark. It was a burial landscape. It was a place where descendants could return and stand near the ground of earlier generations.
Antioch After the United Methodist Years
The Quillin Clan Association states that Antioch Church was decommissioned by the United Methodist Church in 1980 and purchased by the Quillin Clan. That transfer helped keep the building connected to the family and reunion tradition after its regular denominational use ended.
Many rural churches in Appalachia have followed a similar path. Some remain active congregations. Some become reunion halls. Some are maintained by families or local associations. Some disappear except for a cemetery and a name on a road. Antioch’s story is significant because the place remained visible. It still had a building, a family association, and a tradition strong enough to bring people back.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources lists several Scott County properties in the Virginia Landmarks Register and National Register of Historic Places, including the Gate City Historic District, Kilgore Fort House, Fulkerson-Hilton House, Bush Mill, and Mount Vernon Methodist Church. Antioch Church does not appear on that visible Scott County DHR listing, but that does not mean the site lacks historical value. It means the best evidence for Antioch remains in deeds, newspapers, cemetery records, family papers, and local memory.
Why Antioch Matters
Antioch matters because it represents a common but often overlooked kind of Appalachian history. It was not famous in the way a courthouse, battlefield, railroad depot, or incorporated town might be famous. Its importance came from steadiness. A family gave land. A church was built. A cemetery grew nearby. Women met in community clubs. Families returned for reunions. Newspapers recorded small notices that, taken together, show decades of continuity.
Scott County’s larger history includes frontier roads, the Wilderness Road, Big Moccasin Gap, county formation, railroad growth, and the commercial life of Gate City. Antioch is smaller than those stories, but it belongs inside them. It shows how a rural place held together through family, worship, and repeated gatherings. The name survived because people kept using it.
In that sense, Antioch is not just a dot near Gate City. It is one of the quiet places where Scott County history can still be read in land records, church memory, cemetery stones, and old newspaper columns.
Sources & Further Reading
Library of Virginia. “Scott County Microfilm.” Library of Virginia. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA255
Scott County Clerk of Circuit Court. “Document Search.” Scott County, Virginia. https://scottcountyva-web.tylerhost.net/web/
Virginia’s Judicial System. “Scott Circuit Court.” Virginia Courts. https://www.vacourts.gov/courts/circuit/scott/home
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index Availability.” Library of Virginia. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/available.asp
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index.” Library of Virginia. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/
Library of Virginia. “Scott Co. Chancery Goes Digital!” The UncommonWealth, February 1, 2013. https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2013/02/01/scott-co-chancery-goes-digital/
FamilySearch. “Scott County, Virginia Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Scott_County%2C_Virginia_Genealogy
FamilySearch. “Personal Property Tax Lists of Scott County, 1815–1863.” FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/405452
FamilySearch. “Land Tax Lists of Scott County [Virginia], 1815–1863.” FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/405524
FamilySearch. “Deed Books, 1815–1866, with a General Index, 1815–1960.” FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/269680
Scott County, Virginia. “Early History of Scott County.” Scott County, Virginia. https://www.scottcountyva.gov/177/Early-History-of-Scott-County
Quillin Clan Association of Scott County, Virginia. “Quillin Clan | Quillen Clan ‘84th Reunion 2025’ Page.” Quillin Clan Association. https://quillinclan.com/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Antioch Church.” Geographic Names Information System, The National Map. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/gaz-record/1463369
U.S. Geological Survey. “TopoView.” National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Gate City, VA.” 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle, 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/VA/VA_Gate_City_20160719_TM_geo.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Scott County.” Virginia Landmarks Register Online. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/location/scott-county/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Historic Registers.” Virginia Department of Historic Resources. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1932. https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H011614.pdf
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 1992 reprint. https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_Scott_County_Virginia.html?id=n2pWQWkA1cUC
Gate City Herald. “Quillin Reunion Set for August 25.” August 8, 1940. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19400808.1.1
Gate City Herald. “Quillen Clan Meeting at Antioch Sunday.” August 23, 1951. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19510823.1.1
Gate City Herald. “Annual Quillen Reunion at Antioch Church Sunday.” August 26, 1960. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19600826.1.1
Scott County News. “Antioch HDC Meeting Notice.” January 14, 1954. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=SCTCN19540114.1.4
Gate City Herald. “Antioch HDC Meeting Notice.” July 16, 1953. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19530716.1.5
Bristol Virginia-Tennessean. “Antioch Methodist Church of Scott County Reference.” January 22, 1958. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=BVT19580122.1.2
Peterson, Phyllis Louise. Scott County, Va. Cemetery Records. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/scottcountyvacem06pete/scottcountyvacem06pete_djvu.txt
Find a Grave. “Quillin Cemetery.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/51773/quillin-cemetery
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Virginia.” Appalachian Regional Commission. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/virginia/
Author Note: Antioch is the kind of Scott County place that shows how much history can live in a church deed, a cemetery, and a family reunion notice. I wanted this article to treat the community as more than a map name by following the records that kept its memory alive.