Big Spring Presbyterian Church
Newville, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Original log meeting house was erected 1737 near the Big Spring. Church was fully organized, October 1738. Present stone structure was built 1789, and in 1790 the trustees laid out Newville as a town on the church-owned glebe.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Scots-Irish settlers raised a log meeting house near the Big Spring in 1737 and formally organized their Presbyterian congregation the next year. As the community grew they built the present stone church in 1789. A year later the trustees laid out the town of Newville on the church's own glebe land, the congregation quite literally founding the town around it.
Why it matters
Big Spring reflects how Scots-Irish Presbyterian congregations anchored settlement across the Cumberland Valley frontier, with the church often serving as the seed of the town itself.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Appalachian Trail Museum10.8 mi away
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Related events
- · Founding of Newville
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Middle Spring Church
Southampton Township, PA · est. 1950
Middle Spring Church was founded in 1738 by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, part of the wave of immigrants who streamed into the Cumberland Valley frontier in the early 18th century. Its first congregation gathered near the old cemetery a short distance northwest of here, worshiping there until 1781. The present church building went up in 1847, with a parsonage added in 1855.
St. Patrick's Church
Carlisle, PA · est. 1986
Catholic worship took root in Carlisle in 1779, when a Jesuit priest acquired this lot on the eve of American independence. A humble log chapel of 1784 gave way to brick in 1806 and finally to the present church in 1893. Nearby stands St. Katherine's Hall, built in 1901 by Mother Katharine Drexel to serve Catholic students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Reformed Presbyterian Church
Silver Spring Township, PA · est. 2010
On a late-summer day in 1752, some 250 Scottish Covenanter Presbyterians gathered at Joseph and Elizabeth Junkin's frontier farm for what is recorded as the first Communion of their faith in the New World. The nine-hour outdoor service at the "Junkin Tent" was led by Rev. John Cuthbertson, the first Reformed Presbyterian missionary in America. This scattered congregation of immigrants helped plant the roots of the denomination on American soil.
Union Church
Mechanicsburg, PA · est. 1954
Built in 1825 on land donated by Martin Rupp, Union Church is remembered as the oldest public building in Mechanicsburg. True to its name and charter, it was shared among many different religious congregations, each welcome to worship there for a small fee in a community shaped by Pennsylvania's German settlers.