Middle Spring Church
Southampton Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded 1738 by pioneer Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Until 1781, the church was at the old cemetery which is about one-tenth mile NW from here. Present church built, 1847; parsonage built, 1855.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian congregations like this one anchored frontier communities across the Pennsylvania backcountry, carrying both faith and a fiercely independent culture into the colonial interior.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Appalachian Trail Museum12.9 mi away
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Related events
- · Founding of Middle Spring Church, 1738
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Big Spring Presbyterian Church
Newville, PA · est. 1985
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.
Falling Spring Church
Chambersburg, PA · est. 1948
In the 1730s, waves of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians pushed west of the Susquehanna into the Cumberland Valley, carrying their faith and their meetinghouses with them. Falling Spring's congregation dates to 1734, and the stone sanctuary standing today rose in 1803 as the community matured from frontier outpost into settled town. Presbyterian churches like this one anchored the earliest permanent European settlement of the Pennsylvania backcountry.
Israel Benevolent Society Cemetery
Chambersburg, PA · est. 2002
Consecrated in 1844, this Chambersburg burial ground was established by a Jewish Holy Burial Society so that the area's small but growing Jewish community could bury its dead according to Jewish law. It stands as the first Jewish cemetery west of Philadelphia, opened during the wave of mid-19th-century migration that carried Jewish families inland from the coast. Among those interred is Isaac Burgauer, remembered as the only Southern Jewish soldier who fell at Gettysburg to rest in a Northern Jewish cemetery.
First Lutheran Church
Chambersburg, PA · est. 1953
When the frontier town of Chambersburg was still young, its Lutheran and German Reformed settlers raised a simple log church together in 1780 and shared it for nearly three decades. The land came from town founder Benjamin Chambers, and the congregation that gathered there has rebuilt on the same spot across generations—the present structure being the third. It is a small window into the Pennsylvania German communities that shaped the region.