Credit: mymcm

The Pleasant View Historical Association received $943,000 from the federal government to preserve and restore a former segregated church and one-room schoolhouse in Quince Orchard that will be used to show future generations what transpired there.

U.S. Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and U.S. Rep. David Trone, D-6th, presented an oversized check for the work at the site of the former Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church, the former Quince Orchard Colored School and the Pleasant View Cemetery, all located on Darnestown Road in North Potomac.

The three-acre property was purchased three years after the Civil War ended for $54.

At least four people who attended the school, including 104-year-old Ida Pearl, came to the ceremony Monday.

In the future, the church will be used to hold historic records and also be a site for weddings and other church and community activities.

Thompkins Hallman, 99, attended school there and was a World War II veteran who serving in the Pacific. He recalled the school, which had 190 students and went through sixth grade, and the potbelly stove it had.

Esther Lyons, who also attended the school, said, “It just brings back a lot of memories.” She added that she was very pleased that others in the area will learn what took place on the site.

There were three United Methodist churches in the area, two serving white congregants and one for African Americans. They split over their views on slavery and eventually merged soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.