Reformed Presbyterian Church
Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
On August 23, 1752, Scottish Covenanter Presbyterians held their first recorded Communion in the New World here at Joseph and Elizabeth Junkin's farm. A scattered community of 250 worshippers attended this nine-hour outdoor service at the "Junkin Tent" on America's frontier. Rev. John Cuthbertson, the first Reformed Presbyterian missionary in America, presided over the gathering, which contributed to the establishment of the denomination.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The gathering marks the transplanting of a distinct Scottish religious tradition to the American frontier, part of the broader story of immigrant faiths shaping the young country's spiritual landscape.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Cumberland Valley was the edge of the British colonial world—fertile limestone country just beyond the settled east, where the forest, the frontier, and the unknown began. Into this landscape poured waves of immigrants from Ulster and Scotland, drawn by cheap land and the promise of room to live by their own lights. They brought their plows, their stubbornness, and above all their faith.
Among them were the Covenanters: Scottish Presbyterians heirs to a fierce tradition forged in the religious struggles of the old country, where their forebears had signed solemn covenants and suffered for refusing to bend their worship to the crown's will. They were people for whom church was not a social habit but the organizing fact of existence.
On the American frontier in 1752 there were no steeples waiting, no settled ministers on every corner. Worship happened where the faithful gathered—on a working farm, under the open sky—and a community counted itself blessed if a true minister could reach them at all. That scarcity is the backdrop for what took place at the Junkin farm.
People & events
On August 23, 1752, at the farm of Joseph and Elizabeth Junkin, a scattered community of some 250 Scottish Covenanter Presbyterians came together for what is recorded as the first Communion of their faith in the New World. Picture it: families arriving on foot and on horseback from miles around, converging on a single frontier homestead for a day unlike any other.
Presiding was the Rev. John Cuthbertson, remembered as the first Reformed Presbyterian missionary in America—a man whose ministry meant endless travel across rough country to reach believers who might otherwise go years without the sacrament. The gathering took place at what came to be called the "Junkin Tent," and it was no quick service. It ran some nine hours, out in the open air, a marathon of preaching, prayer, and the solemn sharing of Communion.
That the Junkins opened their land for it tells you something about how these communities worked. A farm became a sanctuary; a host family became, for a day, the heart of a denomination's life. Nine hours outdoors, 250 strong, far from the nearest city—this was devotion measured in endurance.
Its place in the American story
America is often described as a nation of transplanted faiths, and this Cumberland County gathering is a small, vivid instance of exactly that. Here a distinct Scottish religious tradition took root in American soil—carried across an ocean, preserved through hardship, and planted on the frontier by ordinary immigrant families.
The event contributed to the establishment of the Reformed Presbyterian denomination in America, one thread in the astonishing religious variety that the colonies were weaving together. Every such community that organized itself, called a minister, and gathered to worship added to a pattern that would eventually make the young country one of the most religiously diverse places on earth.
There is a broader American truth here too. The freedom to worship in one's own way—the very thing the Covenanters' ancestors had been denied in the old country—found room to breathe on the frontier. Long before it was written into the nation's founding documents, that freedom was being lived out, nine hours at a time, on farms like this one.
If you visit
Come here with a little imagination in your pocket, because the power of this spot is in what it once held rather than what towers over it now. Stand near the marker and try to repopulate the quiet ground: 250 people, a long summer day in 1752, voices carrying across open country.
Think about the distances. These worshippers were "scattered," the record tells us, which means many traveled real miles over frontier roads to be present. That effort is part of the story—this was not a convenient gathering but a deliberate, difficult act of faith.
The site fits beautifully into a road trip tracing the Scots-Irish and Scottish settlement of Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley, or one following the deep roots of American religious life. Pair it with the old churches and burial grounds that dot this region, and you begin to feel how thoroughly faith shaped the frontier. Leave remembering that America's grand story of religious freedom is built from countless small, determined gatherings exactly like this one.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Rev. John Cuthbertson
- · Joseph Junkin
- · Elizabeth Junkin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Silver Spring Presbyterian Church
Silver Spring Township, PA · est. 1947
Among the very first Europeans to push into the Cumberland Valley were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who in 1734 gathered a congregation on land held by James Silver. The stone church that still stands was raised in 1783, in the hopeful early years of American independence, and was carefully restored in 1928 to its 18th-century form. Nearly three centuries on, worship continues on the same ground.
Union Church
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Around 1740 the Irish immigrant George Croghan set up a trading post on this ground and built it into one of the most far-reaching British trade networks in colonial America. Reaching west into the French-contested Ohio Country, he learned Native American languages and customs to secure the furs that Europe craved. For three decades he was among Britain's most important go-betweens at treaty conferences with Indian nations.
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