Built in 1794, this historic structure is a 1+1⁄2-story, four by six-bay, brick, Georgian-style building that measures forty-eight feet by sixty feet, and has a gable roof. The interior of the church includes two ten-plate stoves, brick aisleways, a crude ladder leading to a loft, and wooden pews that are long and narrow with high straight-backed seating. The ends of the pews are carved with the names of the previous occupants identifying the military ranks they held during the Revolutionary War.
Rocky Springs Church was a pay for pew church that required members to sign a financial agreement between the trustees of the church and the pew holders requiring an annual fee for occupancy of the pew.[2]
The Church's pulpit is circular in form and positioned above the pews giving the speaker full view of the congregation. Access is gained by a staircase. Above the pulpit is an oval-shaped canopy or sounding board.
Five acres of land to build the church were acquired by warrant on November 6, 1792. Trustees of the congregation[3] who acquired the land upon which to build the church included: George Matthews, Esq., James McCalmont, Esq., James Ferguson, Esq., James Culbertson, Esq., and Samuel Culbertson. The property includes the church cemetery; the oldest gravestone dates to the 1780s.[4]
Each year, the church is opened for an annual Presbyterian service giving the people in attendance an opportunity to experience the austere beauty of the church.[5]
Gallery
Drawing made in 1894 for the centennial
Rocky Spring Church, 2013
Pews carved with the name of the pew holder
Straight-backed, carved, pews and crude ladder to loft
^Engle, William Henry (1970). Notes and Queries: Historical, Biographical and Genealogical: Relating Chiefly to Interior PA. Genealogical Publishing Company. pp. 98, 103.
