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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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