Silver Spring Presbyterian Church
Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded 1734 on land of James Silver by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, earliest settlers of the Cumberland Valley. Present church built in 1783, restored in 1928 to its original style, and still used for worship.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Scotch-Irish who founded this church were the vanguard of settlement in the Pennsylvania backcountry, a restless people whose migration helped define the American frontier.
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Related people
- · James Silver
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George Croghan (c.1718-1782)
Hampden Township, PA · est. 2021
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.
Derry Church
Derry Township, PA · est. 1948
Founded in 1729, Derry Church grew from the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlement that spread across the Pennsylvania backcountry in the early 1700s. Its first pastor, William Bertram, was installed in 1732 by the Donegal Presbytery, and in 1741 the sons of William Penn patented its wooded grove to the congregation. The surrounding churchyard is remembered as the oldest pioneer graveyard in the region.
Oliver Pollock (1737-1823)
Hampden Township, PA · est. 2018
A Scots-Irish immigrant, Oliver Pollock built a merchant fortune — in part through the slave trade — and poured the modern equivalent of millions into the American Revolution. Convinced that the young nation's future lay in the West, he worked to open trade along the Mississippi River, channeling arms and supplies to the frontier and financing George Rogers Clark's Illinois Campaign. The crushing debts he took on for the cause led to imprisonment and the loss of much of his wealth; he spent his later years, from 1792 to 1806, living here in Cumberland County.
Union Church
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