Smithfield Church
Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Believed to be the first of four early churches built by Dutch Settlers, it stood below the road toward the river. The log structure housed the Dutch Reformed congregation until it moved to the Old Stone Church in Shawnee ca. in 1752.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the mid-1700s the Dutch families who had settled this region raised a simple log meetinghouse, said to be the first of four early churches they built. It sheltered a Dutch Reformed congregation until roughly 1752, when the worshippers moved to the Old Stone Church at Shawnee. In an age when the church was the heart of frontier community life, this humble structure anchored the faith of one of the region's earliest European settlements.
Why it matters
The church reflects how colonial settlers carried their religious traditions into the American backcountry, planting congregations that helped bind scattered frontier families into communities.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nicholas Dupuy (1682-1762) - PLAQUE
Smithfield Township, PA ¡ est. 1930
In 1727 Nicholas Dupuy became the first European settler at Shawnee on the Delaware, buying some 3,000 acres â including river islands â from the Minsi (Munsee) band of the Lenape. He descended from Huguenot refugees who had fled religious persecution in France and reached New Amsterdam in 1662. By mid-century the growing community had land set aside, through proprietor William Allen, for a Dutch Reformed congregation that endures today as a Presbyterian church.
Dutch Settlers
Middle Smithfield Township, PA ¡ est. 2000
Long before Pennsylvania's roads and railroads, Dutch colonists pushed inland from the Hudson River valley toward the Delaware, following the rugged trace known as the Old Mine Road. Crossing at Walpack Bend, these early settlers opened up this corner of the Pocono region, making the route the oldest road in Monroe County. Their arrival marked the first sustained European presence in a landscape then largely shaped by Native peoples.
Colonel Jacob Stroud - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA ¡ est. 1931
This graveyard began as the cemetery of the Mission of Dansbury, a Moravian outpost started in 1743 near where Daniel Brodhead had settled in 1736. The mission chapel was destroyed during the Indian uprising of 1755 amid the French and Indian War, then rebuilt. Colonel Jacob Stroud â the frontier officer and founder of Stroudsburg â lies buried here.
Slate Industry
Bangor, PA ¡ est. 1947
When Welsh immigrant Robert M. Jones arrived in 1848, he opened the first slate quarries around Bangor, drawing on skills carried from the slate country of Wales. The industry boomed, and the region became one of the world's leading producers of slate for roofing and for the writing slates and pencils once found in every schoolhouse. Waves of Welsh workers followed, giving the area a distinct heritage that endured for generations.