280th Anniversary Reflections

On August 1, 1721 Andrew Galbraith was sent to a meeting of the New Castle Presbytery at the Head of Christiana meeting-house, Delaware, to request pastoral supplies for the people of Chiquesalunga.  That was our name for the area of the Chiques creeks that join and enter the Susquehanna below Marietta.

The August 1721 date documents the beginning of the Donegal congregation though the Rev. David Evans reported at the same meeting that he had preached to the Scots-Irish living near the Chiques creek earlier that summer.  Supply ministers came regularly thereafter.

The first use of the name "Dunnegaal" was by the Clerk of Presbytery in September 1723. This followed the official change of the name of the township in 1722 from West Conestoga to Donegal, in deference to the origin of so many of the settlers who had come from the Donegal, Ireland area.

We do not know when the first log church was built.  It may have been as early as 1721 but perhaps only by 1724 when there is the first mention of winter service being held.  Summer and fall gatherings could have been held outdoors.  Dr. Ziegler who wrote a history of Donegal Church in 1902 states that he remembers seeing the foundation of the early log building in about the middle of the cemetery.  The present stone building may have been erected as early ad 1730.

Pastoral supplies continued to be assigned by the New Castle Presbytery until September 1726 when, at a meeting of the Synod in Philadelphia, Donegal Presbyterians called the Rev. James Anderson to be their first full-time pastor.  He was installed in August of 1727, 275 years ago.