Courtney McKinney-Whitaker • Derry member

Three Churches, One Story

During the 18th century, three major Presbyterian congregations grew along the Swatara. While they squabbled among themselves from time to time, such as during the Old Light-New Light controversy of the Great Awakening, there was more to unite the Derry, Paxton, and Hanover churches than to separate them. Scots-Irish immigrants tended to travel and settle in family groups, and these congregations were united by strong ties of blood, culture, and religion. Many congregants worshiped at two or even three of these churches at various points in their lives. Others might worship at one and be buried at another. Often, the same pastor served more than one church. The lives and histories of these congregations were entwined, so it is helpful to think of the era of the American Revolution and early republic as one story involving three churches.

The Hanover Resolves

By the time the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, the American Revolution had been raging for over a year. The Declaration’s unprecedented accomplishment was to unite 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies behind the cause of American independence, but its actual content owed much to ideas expressed across the colonies in preceding years. Prior to the Declaration, many local documents also detailed grievances against the government and declared a willingness to fight for a new relationship with Great Britain. The most well-known of these are the Hanover Resolves adopted in Hanover County, Virginia on July 20, 1774 and the Mecklenburg Resolves adopted in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 31, 1775. 

However, the less famous Hanover Resolves likely produced at or near Hanover Presbyterian Church (in what is now East Hanover Township) predate both of these and were the first set of such resolves adopted in Pennsylvania. Adopted on June 4, 1774, the Hanover Resolves contained five points:  

1st. That the recent action of the Parliament of Great Britain is iniquitous and oppressive.

2nd. That it is the bounden duty of the people to oppose every measure which tends to deprive them of their just prerogatives.

3rd. That in a closer union of the colonies lies the safeguard of the liberties of the people.

4th. That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles.

5th. That a committee of nine be appointed, who shall act for us and in our behalf as emergencies may require.

In committing their cause “to heaven and our rifles,” a sentiment in the spirit of the militant theology of John Knox, signers reinforced the ideals of the Scottish Reformation. One member of the Committee for the Hanover Resolves, (later Colonel) John Rodgers, is buried at Derry, and several others are known or thought to be buried at Paxton or Hanover.

A Presbyterian War

During the American Revolution, Scots-Irish Presbyterians fought heavily on the side of the new United States, whether as militia troops, as frontier rangers, or as part of the regular Continental army. British-allied individuals from common mercenary soldiers to King George III himself noted the Presbyterian nature of the rebellion, though at the time they used the term Presbyterian to encompass many groups of dissenters from the Church of England. Presbyterian most commonly referred to the Congregationalists and Puritans of New England and the Scots-Irish Presbyterians of the mid-Atlantic, whose ancestors had given the Crown so much trouble during the 1600s. 

The following is a representative sample of sources laying the war at the feet of Presbyterians:

• One Hessian mercenary serving in the British Army wrote home to Germany, “call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.”  
• A Pennsylvania loyalist said, “that the whole was nothing but a scheme of a parcel of hot-headed Presbyterians.” 
• In 1776, advisor William Jones warned the Crown, “this has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning.” 

Given these circumstances, it is worth asking to what extent the American Revolution was an extension of the half-century of religious warfare that gripped the island of Great Britain from 1650-1700. Historian Richard Gardiner claims, “Religious and denominational dynamics were vitally central to the revolt. Historians have failed to state this as clearly as it deserves. The allegation that the American Revolution was a Presbyterian rebellion is an important one to understand if we are to have a truly comprehensive understanding of what happened and why…\ the American Revolution did have a ‘holy war’ dynamic to it that pitted Anglicans against dissenters (who were generally referred to as Presbyterians), and in the minds of the loyalists, the war was fundamentally, at bottom, a Presbyterian rebellion.”

Derry’s cemetery plaque lists 40 men who provided military service in the American Revolution. By the late 1780s, Derry Church’s congregation, drawn from up to ten miles from the church, numbered about 40 financially contributing families with at least 70 families in the congregation as a whole, while Derry Township’s full population stood at about 200. Forty men, therefore, indicates a significant portion of the population, and that number leaves out the unknown contributions of women, children, and unenlisted men.

Similar memorial plaques at Paxton and Hanover list several dozen men each. There is some overlap among names on the three memorial plaques, which may indicate separate individuals with the same name, or confusion about some veterans’ final resting places. Either way, it is another indication of the close bonds among these congregations in the 18th century.

After the War

Major military operations ended at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, and the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war in 1783. Dauphin County was carved out of Lancaster County in 1785, its French name an anomaly in a largely Scots-Irish and German area. Most likely, the new county was named to honor French support for the American Revolution, as le Dauphin is the traditional title of the Crown Prince of France.

Reverend John Elder continued to serve Derry and Paxton Churches from 1775 to his retirement in 1791. (Upon his death in 1792, Elder was buried at Paxton.) From 1791-1793, stated supply pastors served Derry and Paxton. In 1793, Derry, Paxton, and Harrisburg (now Market Square) churches called the 23-year-old Reverend Nathaniel Snowden, the first of Derry’s pastors to be born in North America. (Hanover, by this time, appears to have been defunct or in significant decline, though a building remained on the site until 1875.)

It is always challenging to follow a long-established pastor such as John Elder, even when the pastor doesn’t have Elder’s significant sway over civic and political, as well as religious, life. Snowden appears to have struggled with the demands of three churches, and he parted ways with Derry and Paxton in 1796, remaining at Harrisburg/Market Square. While Snowden asked to be relieved only of his responsibilities to Derry, Paxton chose to end their relationship with Snowden as well, leaving him only the city church. Perhaps this is another indication of the strong ties between Derry and Paxton. For another century, until 1895, Paxton and Derry continued to be served by many of the same pastors. Thus, old relationships endured in a new nation.

 

Sources

Derry Presbyterian Church. In Memory of Heroes of the Revolutionary War and Defenders of the Frontier. 2006. Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Gardiner, Richard. “The Presbyterian Rebellion?” Journal of the American Revolution, September 5, 2013. https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/presbyterian-rebellion/.

Harrisburg Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution. In Memory of the Heroes of the Revolution, Frontier Defenders and Soldiers of the French and Indian War Buried in Paxton Churchyard. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Harris Ferry Chapter Sons of the American Revolution. In memory of the 44 veterans of the American Revolution who lie buried here. 1999. Grantville, Pennsylvania.

“Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden (1770-1850).” Church Timeline. Derry Presbyterian Church (USA). 2024.
https://www.derrypres.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Snowden_Nathanial_edited.docx.pdf.

Notes

^[i] Capt. Johann Heinrichs to the Counsellor of the Court, January 18, 1778: “Extracts from the Letter Book of Captain Johann Heinrichs of the Hessian Jager Corps, 1778-1780,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22 (1898), 137. Qtd. in Gardiner.

^[ii]  “Minutes of the Committee of Safety of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1774-1776,” from the original in the library of General William Watts Hart Davis, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; entry for August 21, 1775, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 15 (1891), 266. Qtd. in Gardiner.

^[iii] William Jones, “An Address to the British Government on a Subject of Present Concern, 1776,” The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. William Jones, 12 vols. (London, 1801), Vol. 12, 356. Qtd. in Gardiner.