"I have been longing ever since we have been here to have a convent here someday, where our busy city workers could come for rest and change, and which might be a center of religious life and work in this valley"
-Eva Lee Matthews, September 1897
(Letter written to her sister at the Esmeralda Inn, Bat Cave, NC)
Eva Lee Matthews, (1862-1928) who later became “Mother Eva Mary” of the Community of the Transfiguration, first visited Bat Cave, North Carolina in September of 1897 when she was in need of rest. Her brother Paul and his wife Elsie, had stayed at the Esmeralda Inn on their honeymoon earlier that year and knew the remote, pristine place. So, when doctors ordered Eva complete rest due to illness from exhaustion, Paul said he knew a perfect place. That was the beginning of the Sisters presence in Bat Cave.
Eva wrote many letters and poems from her experiences here, hiking to waterfalls and exploring the mountains. She and Beatrice Henderson had come here after the long, strenuous and difficult work in Cincinnati, where they had been planning the religious community that was their dream. It would become the Community of the Transfiguration and they would begin begin Bethany Home for Children,—which eventually became Bethany School, today on the grounds of the Convent, the Mother House in Glendale, Ohio. It is the only K-8 Episcopal School in Ohio. What a history.
In the photo of Mother Eva and Sister Beatrice with “Thomas the horse”, little Edward was here with them and was one of the first children, along with some infants, who formed the new Bethany Home for Children. Stories are still alive here in the Hickory Nut Gorge, of there being students, young girls from Bat Cave, who went up to Cincinnati to attend Bethany School when it began.
When I first visited the Convent in 2008, needing a retreat and “quiet place” to write and reflect, I met Sister Monica Mary, in the library, along with Sister Eleanor Grace. Sister Monica had been working on a book of the history of the community and immediately asked me to help her. Loving history, and delighted to be of use to the Sisters, I would come on weekends or holiday from the university and we would pour over the stories and work she’d begun. It took us five years, and in 2014,“Women of Devotion: History of an Anglican Community of Women” was published by Orange Frasier Press.
Sister Monica was emphatic that it be known that Bat Cave was the first “ministry” she called “our first Branch House” and the real beginnings of the community. I was incredulous, however the more I learned,—and am still learning here—St Monica was correct.
It was September of 1897. There were trains by then, from Cincinnati to Asheville and she and Beatrice rode the train to the depot in Asheville where they were met by horse (Thomas) and wagon. They made their way to the Sherrill’s Inn on the old “drovers road” through the Hickory Nut Gap, where they stayed overnight, traveling the next day up to Bat Cave, staying at the Esmeralda Inn.
While here, Eva asked if anyone knew of a place they might rent, to have as a retreat for the Sisters. They were told that “yes, there was an old farmhouse nearby that they might rent for $25 dollars a year.”
In 1900, they were able to purchase the house and the land, and that year they began work building a church near their house that served also as the first school in the area. Apparently, they hung a curtain in the middle, and church was held on the east side, and school on the other. In 1915, they moved the Church and School building down to the river where the present day Bat Cave Fire Station is on Highway 74A which is known as the old Charlotte highway. In 1945, that building burned, and Paul Matthews, Eva’s brother gave them land he had near the bat cave, to build the present Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, Bat Cave, now part of the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
First Church and School at Bat Cave, built 1900
