Frederick W. Neve came to Virginia from his native England in 1888 to serve as the rector of Emmanuel Church in Greenwood, Virginia. In 1890, Neve began building mission churches, the first of which was St. John the Baptist in the Ragged Mountains. Over the next two decades Neve planted mission churches along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains in seven Virginia counties.

In the first edition of his newsletter, Our Mountain Work (March 1909),  Neve wrote, "After the work [in the Ragged Mountains] had been carried on for some time, I could not help thinking what a good thing it would be if the same kind of work could be extended to the Blue Ridge, where I knew from what I had heard, the conditions were very similar to those prevailing in the Ragged Mountains, only worse...my idea was to plant strong missions all along the Blue Ridge, about 10 miles apart."