Abingdon Tavern

Can’t confirm this is THE tavern, but this tavern dates to 1779 and is the oldest surviving building in Abingdon.

“In January of [1839] young Sheffey and a group of his drinking buddies, left an Abingdon tavern to go to a small revival meeting being held on an upper floor in Grenway’s Storehouse along Main Street, with the intention of harrassing the old circuit rider who was conducting the meeting. During that service young Robert came under conviction and received his religious conversion.” -Clinch Valley News and Richland Press Sept. 22, 1976

Robert Sheffey “was wont to say, ‘I was born naturally and the son of Henry Sheffey and Margaret White, July 4th, 1820, in Wythe county, Virginia, near Ivanhoe, and was born of the Spirit January 9, 1839, in the third story of John C. Greenway’s store house in the town of Abingdon.” -Story of the life of Robert Sayers Sheffey, a courier of the long trail, God’s gentleman, a man of prayer and unshaken faith by Barbery, Willard Sanders