The Emmitsburg Presbyterian Church has been a part of the Emmitsburg community since before the American Revolution. The church's beginning is established as the second Sunday in September of 1760, when the Reverend Robert McMordie was appointed to serve at "Monakasy"--a spelling which evolved into the present Monocacy. The early Presbyterians were among the men and women who pushed down from Pennsylvania through the Monocacy River Valley along the eastern edge of the Catoctin range--farmers, tradesmen, artisans, individualists who helped in the struggle for political independence from Great Britain even as they worked to build their new communities--in which their churches were an essential, living force--in their wide territory west of the settled coastal areas.

For years the church was known as the Tom's Creek Presbyterian Church for its location near the stream that flows down to the Monocacy The meeting house stood about a mile north of Emmitsburg along the Gettysburg road (U.S. 15). 

On January 23,1839, a special meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Tom's Creek church decided to move the meeting house into the corporate limits of Emmitsburg in 1867 the name was changed to the Emmitsburg Presbyterian Church. The church stands today on the lot on West Main Street to which it was moved in 1839. The building itself was remodeled in 1869 and then torn down to make way for a handsome new brick structure, Gothic in style with an imposing steeple, in 1879. This building was struck by lighting in 1902 and burned to the walls the present building was completed in 1904 and was redecorated in 1950. In 1960, the Emmitsburg church celebrated its bicentennial, publishing a book which notes among other things the work of the Reverend Robert S. Grier, who became pastor of the church in 1814 and continued for fifty years.

The Emmitsburg church maintains the traditional services--the church school, the Sunday worship service, the celebrations of the sacraments. The church now is part of the Baltimore Presbytery, in whose mission enterprises it participates. It also has taken an active and progressive role in the Emmitsburg Council of Churches.

Read Ruth Richard's History of the Emmitsburg Presbyterian Church

Read the Histories of Other Churches in Emmitsburg

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