ARP 101 By Rev. Bill Holiman
For the next few issues of the ARP Magazine we will look at some of how our ancestors in the faith had been active in what is now the United States, even before the Declaration of Independence.
Associate Reformed Presbyterians and Gettysburg A
merican and ARP history intersect memorably at Get- Cemetery, but fewer realize that one of Gettysburg’s no- table historic buildings was the home of a longtime ARP minis- ter, Rev. Alexander Dobbin, and that part of the cemetery stands on land once connected to him. Gettysburg also links to the early Associate Presbyterian witness that helped shape today’s Pisgah ARP Church in North Carolina. Reformed Presbyterians arrived in Adams County, Pennsyl- vania, in the 1740s and organized Rock Creek RP Church in 1743 under Rev. Alexander Craighead. Craighead later moved south, eventually to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and the Scottish RP Church sent Rev. John Cuthbertson as a missionary in his place. The congregation’s early commitment was striking. For years they worshiped without a church building, gathering board fastened to a tree held the Bible and psalm book. The John Cochran family walked over South Mountain to worship, and Cochran even forbade his children from picking berries on the Sabbath. Their persistence shows the seriousness with which they practiced worship and Sabbath observance. hour session meeting to address problems that had developed after Craighead’s departure. Meanwhile, Associate Presbyterians began arriving in the 1750s and organized Marsh Creek AP and Conewago AP Churches under Rev. Robert Annan. Conewago did not last, but Marsh Creek remained important. Indian raids in 1756 disrupted the congregation and led many members to travel south along the Great Wagon Road to North Carolina, where they became founding members of today’s Pisgah ARP Church. Rev. Annan was born in Scotland in 1742 and studied under Alexander Moncrieff, one of the original AP ministers. Licensed at Perth at nineteen, he came to Marsh Creek in 1763. Though his ministry there was brief, he later wrote on church-state relations after the Revolu- tionary War and even published an article on fossils found nearby. By the 1760s, Adams County had enough Associates and Reformed Presbyterians that members of the mainline Presbyterian Church sought union with them. In 1769, John Wither- spoon—later a signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of what is now Princ- eton University—was appointed to negotiate a merger, but the effort failed. A few years later, Rev. Alexander Dobbin arrived from Ireland. Along with Cuthbertson and another minister, he helped organize the RP Presbytery on March 10, 1774. Dobbin was born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1742 and educated in Glasgow, Scotland. He built a house at 89 Steinwehr Avenue in Gettysburg, constructed by one of his elders, Elder Dunwoody. When Dunwoody complained about the quality of the building stone, Dobbin replied that he had to put up with the same quality of elders. The house still stands today as a restaurant across from the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
other students for professional careers. He served as moderator of the ARP General Synod in 1804 and was a trustee of Dickinson College. When the RP and AP Churches merged in 1782, Rock Creek and Marsh Creek became ARP congregations, and Dobbin became pastor of both.
September/October 2026
Rock Creek later relocated into Gettysburg. Like many men of his era, Dobbin was also a slaveholder. He died in 1809. The ARP Church divided in 1822. The Synod of the Carolinas and the Synod of the West became independent, while the remaining national ARP Church joined the PCUSA. The Adams County congregations also became independent before eventu- ally returning to the United Presbyterian Church, the northern branch of the former ARP Church.
By the Civil War, most ARPs in Adams County had moved south and west. Marsh Creek Church closed in 1861, though the Gettysburg congregation remained. Dur- near Dobbin’s house. When the National Cemetery was established after the battle, part of the land purchased had once been Dobbin’s farm. His house still faces the cemetery, with a historical marker nearby. Today, the only ARPs left in Gettysburg lie in its cemeteries, but the town was once a meaningful center of ARP education, minis- try, and migration.
Rev. William Holiman is a retired Chap- lain in Mississippi Valley Presbytery.
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