The First Presbyterian Church of Lancaster began in 1763, when James Hamilton granted Lot No. 19 on East Orange Street, on which a church building was erected in 1767. Services were held in the old Court House in Centre Square while the church was being built with funds secured by a lottery enterprise. This method was frequently used in the 18th century to build churches or construct roads.
The Presbyterian Church of Strasburg was dedicated on Christmas Day, 1833; that of Marietta in 1821; of Mt. Joy, 1840; of Christiana, 1859; Memorial Presbyterian Church of Lancaster, 1871.
Methodist ministers first visited Lancaster County in 1781, and a year later the Lancaster Circuit was formed. Bishop Asbury, who died in 1816, was well known in Lancaster County. He frequently stayed in Strasburg at the Inn of John Funck who painted his portrait on a now famous wooden panel in Washington, D. C. The Methodists erected a church near Willow Street in 1791, and another at Strasburg in 1807.
Fifty-four clergymen are named as having supplied the local Methodist churches of Lancaster County up to the year 1802 when the Soudersburg church was erected. Boehm’s Church, still standing in Pequea township, was a pioneer Methodist institution. Henry Boehm had a great deal to do with the founding of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Lancaster in 1807. The church building was erected in 1809 at the corner of Walnut and Christian streets. In 1840 ground was acquired extending the church lot to Duke street, where a handsome church structure now stands.
ST. JAMES EPISCOPAL
St. Paul’s Methodist Church dates from 1849; Broad Street from 1867; Bethel African Methodist Church from 1821. Many Methodist churches are found in southern Lancaster County and in the Octoraro Valley, and in all the Boroughs.
The Church of the United Brethren was the outcome of a meeting held in the Isaac Long barn near Oregon, Lancaster County, in the middle of the 18th century, when leaders of four denominations decided to be Brethren. It was not, however, until 1800 that the new denomination was separately organized. The oldest United Brethren congregation in Lancaster County is Ranck’s in the New Holland Circuit. The congregation met for forty years in a private house until a church was built in 1844.
There are many United Brethren churches in rural Lancaster County. The Otterbein U. B. Church in Lancaster City began in 1902 as a Mission Sunday School and has grown into one of the most vigorous churches in the city.
It is impossible in this space to do more than mention some of the other denominations, some of which are comparatively strong in Lancaster County. There are the United Evangelical churches, the Winebrennerians, or Church of God, members who have been active in the county for more than a century; the German Baptists and the English Baptists; the Church of Christ; the Swedenborgians and the Evangelical Association.