These pages were created by Aprille Cooke McKay circa 2002 and went offline from the University of Michigan site that hosted them in late 2005. I've reproduced them here with her permission in 2006 and have done some minor corrections of typos. I do not plan to actively update these pages but I do welcome corrections, supplementary info, and links to complementary info and related church sites. Please use the threaded discussion boards on this site to discuss these pages and to offer additional info, clarification and to network with descendants for genealogy purposes. Hosting for these pages is provided courtesy of GetOggz.com. & Malcolm Humes.

Early Presbyterian Congregations

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    Virginia and West Virginia

    Alexandria, Fairfax Co., Virginia

    The city of Alexandria, Virginia was named for Captain John Alexander, who in 1670 bought the Robert Howsing grant of six thousand acres, on which sporadic settlements had begun.  The establishment of a town was authorized in 1748.  The next year, County Surveyor John West, Jr. assisted by young George Washington, laid the town off in streets and the usual half-acre lots, eighty four in number.  It soon became a busy port, but of slow general growth.  In the year 1762 large additions were made to its area, which expedited its growth.  Many of the earlier settlers were Friends from Pennsylvania, and certain sections of the city preserve as style of architecture found also in Philadelphia.  Fairfax Parish was established in 1764, and Christ Episcopal Church erected 1767-1773, is a land mark.

    On April 15, 1772, a request for ministerial supplies came to the Presbytery of Donegal from the Presbyterians in Alexandria.  Ministers James Hunt, Amos Thompson and James Long were sent for one Sunday each.  That June, licentiate William Thom was sent there, was duly called to be pastor, at a salary of 118 pounds and eleven shillings, and was ordained and installed on December 3, 1772 at which time Richard Arrell and James Hendricks were the commissioners from the congregation and presumable elders as per custom.  Mr. Thom died some time in August, 1773.

    Other ministers supplied at Alexandria during the remainder of the decade until 1780, when Isaac S. Keith became pastor until 1788.  He was succeeded in 1789 by Rev. James Muir, D.D., a Scotchman who continued as pastor until his death in 1820.  He was buried, dressed in his gown and bands, beneath the pulpit in a grave thirteen feet deep.  At the division of Donegal Presbytery in 1786 preparatory to organization of the General Assembly, Rev. Isaac S. Keith and his Church were included in the new Presbytery of Baltimore.  So the Church of Alexandria was not a constituent of the Presbytery of Winchester until 1853 to 1859, when the Presbytery of Winchester was itself a constituent of the new Synod of Baltimore.  At that time Rev. Elias Harrison, D.D. was the pastor in succession to Dr. Muir.

    The first meeting house was begun in 1774, but finished after 1790 from the proceeds of a lottery authorized that year.  It was struck by lightning and burned in 1835, but rebuilt the next year.  In 1886 this second meeting house was abandoned as a place for worship, and is now only a showplace at 321 South Fairfax Street (1947).
    From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Back Creek Church (also called Stone Church and Tomahawk Church), near Hedgesville, Berkeley Co., West Virginia est. pre-1760

    The Back Creek Church, later named the Stone Church, is now known as the Tomahawk Church from the Tomahawk Spring, a natural curiosity, a good quarter mile northwest of the church.  Like Falling Waters, Back Creek congregation traditionally dates itself about 1745, though it does not appear in the records of Donegal until April 16, 1760.  No deed for the original church has been found.  From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Bullskin Church (Hopewell Congregation), Jefferson Co., West Virginia est. ca. 1736

    On Tuesday, July 20, 1736, a petition was brought into Orange County Court by Morgan Morgan and twenty six associates to state that Rev. Mr. William Williams, minister of the Gospel, had promised to supply them in the administration of his office and to ask that meeting places be established and recorded, one on Mr. Williams' land near his house, and one on land of Morgan Bryan near his house.  The petition was evidently granted.

    On September 22, 1737, Mr. Williams, defined as a Presbyterian minister and gentleman, appeared before the Court at Orange Court House and took the oaths of allegiance and abjuration required of dissenter ministers and declared his intention to hold his meetings at the two places above mentioned.  On June 4, 1745 he took the same oaths at Winchester after the new county of Frederick had been erected out of Orange, at which and at other times he is described as William Williams, Clerk (an old way of saying "cleric").  He is believed to have been an elder in Pencader, near Newark, Delaware, but when and by whom ordained, if at all, is not known.  That he claimed and exercised ministerial functions is clear from the early order books of the two counties; he was even fined at Winchester, Sept. 6, 1745, for the performance of marriage ceremonies when he was no orthodox minister, that is, not a minister of the Church by law established.

    Mr. Williams' home was on Opequon Creek over the ridge from the Bullskin Marsh, Mr. Bryan's 2134 acres stretched along Mill Creek over on to Tuscarora Creek, land on which he sold to Daniel Chancey in 1738.  The appearance of Bullskin congregation in the Donegal Presbytery records on April 2, 1740 and often later, makes it clear that Bullskin and Tuscarora are the two preaching places for which the license was requested.  The ecclesiastical name of Bullskin was Hopewell.  The congregation was called Bullskin because located at the head-spring of Bullskin Run and to distinguish it from a Hopewell congregation in Pennsylvania, and also from the Hopewell Friends meeting nearby.  Rightly, it was Hopewell Church in Virginia.From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Cedar Creek Church, Frederick Co., Virginia est. 1737

    This church is contemporaneous with Opequon, being combined in the records as "both parts of Opeken" or "Opeken and the Hite Tract."  There is a deed drawn in 1736 and recorded at Winchester in 1745 which names as a boundary:  "the south end of the meeting house property near the Big Spring," which in time supplied the Marlboro Iron Works of Isaac Zane, and around which grew a small town which now exists almost forgotten in land-office records.  In 1735 the trustees of the Church sold a portion of the church lands to Captain Richard M. Sydnor.  They found no deed of conveyance for the property to which to refer, so described the land as part of the ground on which the church stands and has stood for nearly a hundred years.  The year 1738 is the latest date assignable for the organization of the united congregations of Opequon and Cedar Creek.  The year 1737 best fits the evidence as a compromise between Gelson and Anderson.  In either case organization only meant the recognition of men who had been elders elsewhere, because this church began as an alternate preaching place within Opequon congregation.  .From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Culpeper County, Virginia

    About 1770, the presbytery began to give earnest heed to its domain east of the Blue Ridge, and on April 10, 1771, a supplication came from Culpeper County which had been erected out of Orange in 1748.  It is known as the district to which Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1714 imported miners from the German Palatinate to foster an iron industry in Virginia.  The project was abandoned but the Germans remained to work their way up into the foothills of the Ridge.  The country is purely rural, and now (1947) with but two Presbyterian congregations in the county, with but 199 members.  Places named in the records were Gourdvine River, North Branch of Rappahannock, Culpeper Court House and Captain Conn's at Culpeper Court House.

    Supply ministers were designated in 1771 and 1772 and about every six months from 1776 to 1780, Rev. Hugh Vance chiefly, Rev. William Thom, pastor at Alexandria, Rev. Stephen Bloomer Balch, pastor at Georgetown, D.C., Rev. Hezekiah James Balch one month, ,and Rev. John McKnight, pastor at Elk Branch.  One supplication from upper part of Culpeper County and Orange in Virginia was for a minister to preach the Gospel and teach a grammar school, 1779.  It is possible these supplications were a reflex from the work of Rev. Amos Thompson in Loudoun, but at any rate interest died down after 1780.  Mission work in the county laid dormant until 1807, when the Presbytery of Winchester began the work which culminated in 1814 in the organization of a Presbyterian Church at Culpeper Court House under the name of Bethesda.From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Elk Branch, near Duffields, Jefferson Co., West Virginia est. ca. 1768

    Probably formed by division of old Potomoke in Virginia, which continued to function under the Shepherdstown name.  In 1775, licentiate John McKnight visited Elk Branch and a definite call for his services as pastor was presented to the Presbytery of Donegal on April 10, 1776 by James McAllister and John Wright, commissioners.  The Presbyterian met at Elk Branch Church on December 3, 1776, completed McKnights parts of trial and the next day ordained and installed him minister.  The Donegal ministers present were:  Robert Cooper (who had been McKnight's instructor), James Long, John Craighead, John King, Hugh Vance, John Black, and John McMillan.  The elders: George Brown, Alexander White (Bullskin), John McLean, and James McAllister.  After McKnight was ordained, John White per custom took his seat as the Elk Branch elder.

    Elk Branch church fell into arrears as to salary and its pastor with consent of the eldership (but without notice to the Presbytery) began to preach at Bullskin, Shepherdstown and across the river at Sharpsburg in Maryland.  Matters came to a head in 1782 and on October 16, the pastorate was dissolved after investigation by a committee in August.  Elk Branch elders mentioned in these proceedings were:  James McAllister, John Wright, John White, Peter Burr and Peter Martin.  Shepherdstown elders were:  John Kearsley, John Mark, John Morrow, Robert Lowry and John Cowan.  On review of the committee proceedings and appeals from its findings, Presbytery acquiesced in the rebuke the committee had given Mark, Lowery, Martin and Kearsley, and itself found that McKnight should not have come to terms with Bullskin and Shepherdstown without concurrence of the Presbytery.

    In 1783, three calls for the pastoral services of Rev. John McKnight were presented in April 1783 from six congregations, namely:  the united congregations of Thomas Creek and Lower Marsh Creek, salary 180 pounds plus fifty bushels of wheat; Bullskin and Cool Spring, fifty and sixty pounds respectively; and the united congregations of South Branch of Potomac and Patterson's Creek in Hampshire, 120 pounds in Virginia currency.  McKnight accepted the first call to the Lower Marsh Creek, in Pennsylvania.

    After 1782 the Elk Branch Church was supplied by ministers of the Presbytery, chiefly Hugh Vance, pastor at Tuscarora, and Robert  Cooper, pastor at Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, until it came under the care of the Rev. Moses Hoge in 1787.  In 1792, the Elk Branch Church was in a state of decay, and the growth of the Jefferson County congregations under Mr. Hoge and the missionaries of the Synod, now of Virginia, required a rearrangement.  So Elk Branch was dissolved.  Part of the congregation with the elder Peter Martin transferred their membership to Shepherdstown; the remainder with elders John White and Peter Burr went to aid in the formation of the new organization at Charles Town.  Elk Branch reappears in 1833 as a new organization. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.
     

    Falling Waters Church, Berekley Co., West Virginia est. pre-1762

    The traditional starting date for Falling Waters congregation in 1745, but I believe it must have been later: it does not appear in the Donegal records until April 27, 1762, though perhaps because it was associated with Tuscarora.   The records are, however, defective from 1744 to 1759. Its proximity to the Potomac, the location of its first house for worship near the main road (now I-81), the records of settlements on Back Creek in 1730, the patenting of land near the location of the church edifice in 1735, all point to a settlement very soon after the stream of Scotch-Irish began to flow.  That the settlement was a large one is seen from the litigation about preempted farm lands which came into the Frederick county Court in 1744 from a large colony of Scotch and Irish immigrants, settled near the ford on the south side of the Potomac.  Tunis Newkirk, one of the trustees for the ground on which the present Falling Waters church stands was likely a son of the Tunis Newkirk who signed the William Williams petition in 1736, but proof of early settlement is not evidence of a church.  Of course, it all depends on the definition of "church" -- if a Presbyterian "church" needs a full session with elders and a settled pastor (rather than merely an alternate preaching place for another congregation), then the date of founding must be later than 1745. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Kittocktin  and Gum Spring Churches, near Leesburg, Loudoun Co., Virginia est. 1773

    Loudoun County was erected in 1757 from the north-western end of Fairfax County, Virginia as settlements spread up the river.  Its county seat in Leesburg, was incorporated in 1758 and named for Francis Lightfoot Lee and Philip Ludwell Lee, local land-owners and trustees of the town.  The founder  of Presbyterianism in the county of Loudoun was Amos Thompson.  The Presbytery of New Brunswick, by which Thompson had recently be licensed, arranged for him to undertake mission work in Loudoun County, but before he entered on that work, he consulted Donegal, the presbytery of jurisdiction, on April 10, 1764.  He was given leave to supply some time in Loudoun.  When he bought land there in 1766 and decided to make Loudoun his home, he was taken as a member of the Presbytery of Donegal.  On June 20 1775, "John Caven, commissioner from the united congregations of Kittocktin Mountain and Gum Spring, presented the adherence of these congregations to Mr. Amos Thompson at thirty five pounds each, Virginia currency, which Mr. Thompson accepts."  On October 11, 1775, ministers James Hunt, Hezekiah James Balch and Hugh Vance were appointed a committee to install him on the first Wednesday in December. In 1774, Mr. Thompson was named in a list as the pastor of the Leesburg congregation.

    In 1776, Mr. Thompson joined the Continental Army as a chaplain; and Gum Spring and Kittocktin come back into the records of Donegal as places to receive frequent supply ministers:  Hugh Vance, chiefly, also John McKnight, Stephen Balch, John McMillan, Robert Cooper, John Slemons, licentiates Samuel Waugh and David Bard who received a formal call to be pastor on April 11, 1780 which he accepted.  On June 19, 1782, he was dismissed from the pastorate but instructed to supply at Leesburg until that fall.  When Bard was installed is not noted.  The fall and winter of 1780-81, licentiate Samuel Waugh was a supply minister in the parishes of Cameron and Shelburn.  After 1782 the record fails us, but sometime after the war Mr. Thompson returned to Leesburg.  On September 24, 1799, he became a member of the Presbytery of Winchester, and in September, 1804 he died at the age of about seventy four, and is buried close to the Leesburg Church.

    It is evident that Kittocktin became disorganized during the period which succeeded the Revolution, but did not die out.  It was revived and reorganized as the Leesburg Church on May 4, 1804, while Mr. Thompson was still alive, by the Rev. James Hall, D.D., with three elders and twenty seven members.  The first elder was Peter Carr who had been a ruling elder in the Kittocktin congregation.  Note also that the present Catoctin Church at Waterford was organized in 1853 by the New School and should not be confused with Kittocktin.

    Gum Spring is a town on the Leesburg Pike about twelve miles south by east of Leesburg and about six miles east by south of Aldie, site of the nearest Presbyterian Church.  The Leesburg Church Directory issued in 1934 states that there is no evidence to show that there ever was a church building in the town of Gum Spring, and offers the suggestion that those Presbyterians worshipped at the Broad Run Church built before 1757 on "the Church Road" about a mile west of the present town of Ryan and about two and a half miles west from the home of Rev. Amos Thompson.

    Lancaster Church, Lancaster Co., Virginia est. 1757

    Colonel James Gordon of Lancaster Co., Virginia and his brother John in Middlesex were wealthy and influential Scotch merchants from County Down, Ireland, and were back of a supplication which went to Hanover Presbytery in July, 1757 from Lancaster and Northumberland.  Rev. Samuel Davies, Rev. John Todd, Rev. James Hunt and Rev. James Caldwell visited the congregations, administered communion and prepared the way for Rev. James Waddell who was ordained June 16, 1762 to be their only pastor.  The Lancaster congregation was set in complete Church order by the ordination and installation of six elders on February 27, 1763, Richard Chichester, Thomas and Dale Carter, John Mitchell, Colonel James Gordon and Colonel Selden.  It is noted that the Larger and Shorter Catechisms were in regular use in the Gordon family, and that Colonel Selden and Mr. Criswell, the schoolmaster, often read a sermon and conducted service when there was no minister.  At one time noted in the Gordon diary, 150 persons communed, 115 whites and thirty-five blacks.

    Rev. James Waddell married Mary Gordon, daughter of Colonel James and in 1778 removed to the Shenandoah Valley to become pastor of Tinkling Springs congregation.  His daughter, Janetta Waddell, married Rev. Archibald Alexander.  After Waddell's removal the congregations dwindled.  Hanover Presbytery sent occasional ministers there until 1797, after which date Winchester endeavored to keep the flame alive, but the congregations were too far from base for a small organization with its hands more than full at home.  Rev. William J. Armstrong itinerated here in 1819 under pay and direction of the Missionary Society of Fredericksburg and stirred up the Baptists and Methodists to greater zeal.  Rev. William Henry Foote followed him in 1820 under pay and direction of the Missionary Society of Alexandria, but only found three aged Presbyterians left.  All others had converted to the Baptist or Methodist faith.  The Lancaster Church, built in 1759, was burned down on February 22, 1820 by the carelessness of the Methodist who burned brush heaps, a windy day, on his adjacent land.  Dr. Foote in his unpublished diary intimates that the carelessness was intentional.  Today (1947), East Hanover Presbytery has but three congregations in the five counties in the Northern Neck below Stafford with but 253 members, the oldest organized in 1888. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.
     

    Lost River, Hardy Co., West Virginia

    Lost River plunges under Sandy Ridge barrier by an underground passage and reappears two miles down stream and about two and a half miles west of Wardensville as the Capon River.  Many congregations along this river have, like the river, appeared, disappeared and reappeared again under new names and locations, each time farther upstream.  The first reference to Lost River on the Donegal Records is on October 13, 1768, when Rev. John Hoge was delegated to preach one Sunday at Mr. Wilson's  near Lost River.  Robert Bell Woodworth, historian of the region held that this location was near Wardensville and that the "Mr. Wilson" mentioned was of the same family as of William R. Wilson, first elder of the Davis Church.

    After 1769, Lost River drops out of the Donegal record and yet appears in 1794 as one of the constituent congregations of the Presbytery.  Why?  On the border between Donegal Presbytery and Hanover Presbytery and its successor, Lexington,  the ministers who visited Upper South Branch supplied Lost River also.  There is some evidence that Rev. Moses Hoge, while pastor at Moorefield 1782-87 cared for the congregation.  This is borne out by the fact that from 1792 (when the Potomac River was made the boundary northward of the Synod of Virginia) on to 1794, the Presbytery of Lexington sent supplies regularly to Lost River, among them Rev. Benjamin Erwin, pastor at Mossy Creek in Rockingham County, licentiate Thomas Poage and Rev. John Poage Campbell.

    Woodworth believes that the location of the church was held in common with the Baptists and was on the northeast side of Cove Run above the wagon road.  Lost River is not on the Aitken list, and the date of formal organization is conjectural. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Opequon Church, Frederick Co., Virginia est. 1737

    By purchase of grants made in 1730 by the Governor and Council fo Virginia to John and Isaac Van Meter, Hans Yost Heydt became realtor for lands on Opequon and Cedar creeks.  He came to the Pack Horse Ford in 1731, removed to the Opequon with twenty families in 1732 and by Christmas 1735 had fifty four families settled on his lands.  Very many of these settlers were from the Elk river region at the head of Chesapeake bay where Rev. Samuel Gelston was minister, among them William Hoge, his family and associates.  These erected a meeting house on Hoge's land, and wrote Mr. Gelston to visit them; which he did on a commission issued by Donegal Presbytery, May 26, 1736.  He was followed in 1737 by Rev. James Anderson, and between them the Opequon congregation was put in church order.  That the congregation was large is witnessed by its first deed in 1745 which names sixteen trustees.  Joist Hite is buried close to the north end of the Opequon church

    In 1755, Rev. John Hoge became the pastor of Opequon and Cedar Creek congregations, the first regularly ordained resident minister in the bounds of the Presbytery of Winchester

    From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Patterson's Creek Church, Fort Ashby (also called Frankfort), Mineral Co., West Virginia est. 1768

    The creek was first settled about 1735, Fort Ashby was built in 1755 and was a trading post with a garrison.  The census of 1782 showed 622 inhabitants along the creek.  Patterson's Creek congregation appears for the first time on the records of the Donegal Presbytery on October 13, 1767, with a request for a licentiate to supply with, of course, a view to a settlement.  It was one of the congregations organized in 1768 by Rev. John Roan, and appears in 1774 in the Aitken list of Virginia vacancies.  It then came under the care of Rev. John Hoge, who was over all of the Virginia vacancies.  Its first resident minister was Rev. Thaddeus Dod.  He visited here and preached in March, 1777 on his way out to Ten Mile Creek in Western, Pennsylvania near Washington.  He returned to the East and was ordained by the Presbytery of New York in October, to be the pastor of that congregation on the Pennsylvania frontier.  November 10 the same year he reached Patterson's Creek with his family -- a wife, two children and two brothers.  Here he remained two years on account of  new  Indian raids on the frontier until September, 1779, when he went on to be one of the founders of Redstone Presbytery, and head of one of the schools out of which grew Washington and Jefferson College.From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Potomac Church, near Shepherdstown, Jefferson Co., West Virginia est. 1743

    On September 19, 1719, the Synod of Philadelphia commissioned the Rev. Daniel McGill, a minister of New Castle Presbytery, lately resident at Upper Marlborough, Maryland,  to go, in answer to a formal supplication to "Potomoke, in Virginia."  He went and reported back to the Synod in September, 1720 that he had visited Potomoke, continued there for some months and put the people in church order, who evidenced their appreciation  by a definite call to him to be their minister.  He declined, and for then next couple of years, the congregation continued to supplicate the Synod with requests for ministers.  In 1722, the Synod appointed Hugh Conn, pastor at Bladensburg (Eastern Branch of Potomac and Pumungi), John Orme, pastor now at Upper Marborough, and William Steward, minister of Manokin church (Princess Anne Co.)  all in Maryland, to go there, and John Orme again in 1723.  Then in 1724, the Synod referred the whole matter to New Castle Presbytery, whose extant records, 1717-1732, make no mention whatever of the congregation, but do mention "Pocomoke, in Maryland."  The exact location of  "Potomoke in Virginia" is not known, but it may have been where Potomac Creek enters the Potomac River near the boundary between Stafford and King George counties.  I do not know if there was a border dispute between Virginia and Maryland over this land -- if there was, that may explain the discrepancy in the records.

    There was another Potomac Church which appears in the records of Donegal Presbytery as early as 1743, associated with Opequon, Bullskin, and Tuscarora in Virginia, but differentiated from them and of sufficient importance to have a supply minister five weeks in succession.  The evidence locates it at or near the Pack Horse Ford, on the Potomac River just below Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  As Potomac Church disappears from the records when Elk Branch and Shepherdstown rise above the horizon, it seems likely that Shepherdstown and Elk Branch arose out of this Potomoke in Virginia by division.  From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    South Branch of Potomac Church, Springfield, Hampshire Co., West Virginia

    The location of this church is not definitely known, but the opinion of Robert Bell Woodworth, historian of the Winchester Presbytery, is that it was located where the Redstone Road crossed the South Branch -- probably at or near what is called Springfield.  The early records often call churches by the names of the congregation instead of the town and it is Woodworth's idea that South Branch and Springfield are the same congregation. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.

    Turkey Run, Fauquier County, Virginia ca. 1778

    In the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge, between Culpeper and Loudoun and west of Prince William settlement began about 1712, but was sparce.  Warrenton, the county seat, was not incorporated until 1810, and the original location on land of Richard Henry Lee contained only twelve lots.

    In 1773, after Rev. William Thom was settled at Alexandria and the Rev. Amos Thompson at Leesburg, mission work was begun by these two men in Fauquier County which crystallized in 1778 in the appearance of Turkey Run as a place for Presbyterian worship.  That year it made supplication by name not only for ministers, Mr. Thompson having gone to the wars, but especially for a man to care for a Latin school.  That year appointments were made for Turnkey Run in connection with Kittocktin and Gum Spring:  Hezekiah James Balch and John McMillan in the spring, John Slemons, Robert Cooper and Samuel Waugh in the fall, the latter into the next year.  Thereafter Turkey Run disappears; only on April 3, 1787, the Presbytery of Hanover appointed Rev. James Waddell to preach two Sundays in Fauquier County, the Presbytery of Donegal having been divided and jurisdictions in a state of transition.

    Probably the Presbyterians conducted services in the Episcopal church by that same name about a mile or so from Warrenton, Virginia.  Dr. Graham, an historian of the area, supposed that the present Warrenton Church grew out of the service conducted at "Turkey Run in Fauquier County."  History is that the Warrenton Church was established on April 13, 1827 by division of the Middleburg congregation gathered and organized by the Rev. William Williamson.

    Tuscarora Church, near Martinsburg, Berkeley Co., West Virginia est. pre-1760

    Tuscarora Church does not appear in the records by name until April 16, 1760, Henry Howe --Historical Collections of Virginia,1852, p. 192-- reports a tradition that the spot where Tuscarora meeting house now stands is the first place where the Gospel was publicly preached and divine service performed west of the Blue Ridge.  Three explanations for failure to mention Tuscarora occur:  1. That Potomoke stood for the united congregation; 2. That the Donegal records are defective at this period; 3. Most probable, that Mr. Williams supplied Tuscarora down to his death in 1760.  The church is near the Tuscarora Creek, about two miles west of Martinsburg through which the creek flows on its way to the Opequon, and that here also there was a Friends Meeting, Providence, established in 1738, the house built in 1741.  Relations between Friends and Presbyterians were so close that the Hopewell Friends History, 1936, is a good source book for the history of the family of William Hoge, Opequon pioneer.  Tuscarora was early associated with the congregation at Bullskin. From A History of the Presbytery of Winchester (Synod of Virginia) by Robert Bell Woodworth, 1947.