Grove Presbyterian Church, 332 Bloom Street Danville, Pa A Brief History of the Grove Presbyterian Church by Frederick L. Jones, Jr. In the Beginning In 2005 the Grove Presbyterian Church celebrated its one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary. The Church’s roots, however, are much older and deeper, coinciding with the birth of Danville and of our Nation. In the 1770’s, when the area was predominately occupied by Native Americans, a small intrepid group of settlers, mostly of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian background, acquired land here. Most prominent among these was General William Montgomery, a Revolutionary War hero who had purchased 600 acres, now a large component of the Borough of Danville but known then as the Mahoning Settlement. In 1775 a plot of about four acres was purchased by four settlers designated as trustees in order to provide sites for a Presbyterian school, church and burial ground, land that is occupied today by the Grove Church campus and Memorial Park (formerly the Presbyterian Cemetery). Illustrative of these early times, one of the trustees, Robert Curry, was killed and scalped and his wife taken captive a few miles from the settlement by a Native American war party. A log schoolhouse was first erected on the site and then, around 1790, a log building for the Mahoning English Presbyterian Church, which had been formally organized in 1785. The congregation had worshiped in General Montgomery’s home and barn until the church was completed, at which time Reverend John Boyd Patterson became their first permanent Pastor. Growth of the congregation and the community, now named Danville, led in 1826 to the replacement on the same site of the Log Church by a rather plain and evidently insubstantial building known simply as the Brick Church. Situated in a grove of stately oaks, its features included a tall pulpit, high-backed pews, and a manually operated pipe organ. By the 1850’s, membership had increased, the church building had deteriorated and, perhaps more important, the homes and activities of the majority of the congregation now centered in the area between the canal and the Susquehanna River, leaving the Brick Church in a backwater. Consequently, the present Mahoning Presbyterian Church was built and completed in 1854, and the congregation moved there. A significant number of the members, however, happily recalled worshiping in their old, if dilapidated, church in the grove. In 1855, an amicable division was formally agreed to, and permission was granted by the Presbytery on October 2, to form a new Congregation called the Mahoning English Presbyterian Church North. A few years later, the name was changed to the Grove Presbyterian Church. The First Century Members of the newly-formed Church, numbering about one hundred, promptly set to work renovating their Brick Church in the grove, worshiping in local halls until the job was completed in 1856. Reverend Charles Jewett Collins was their first Pastor. In 1858 they built a two-story brick Manse in Victorian style to house the Pastor and his family. It was clear, however, that a new church building was needed; hence the old brick edifice was torn down around 1871. Some of its materials were incorporated over the next four years in construction of the present Gothic church. The Chapel was completed first, and the congregation worshiped there until the Sanctuary and its magnificent steeple were finished. Finally, on October 24, 1875, the new church was dedicated with much ceremony.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 04:07:08 +0000
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