Mother of Reformed Churches: German Pioneers in Conewago Valley

This congregation has been called the Mother of Reformed Churches in this region, and the title fits. In May of seventeen forty-seven, German pioneers settling the southern end of the Conewago Valley organized a congregation here, one of the earliest Reformed Christian communities in south-central Pennsylvania. The German Reformed tradition they carried across the Atlantic was rooted in the theology of John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger, distinct from the Lutheran church that many of their neighbors attended.

The original meetinghouse grew over generations, with a section of the present building erected in seventeen ninety-eight. In the old churchyard surrounding the church lie many of the notable figures of early colonial settlement in this valley, German immigrants who carved farms out of the Pennsylvania frontier and built the religious institutions that would anchor communities here for the next two and a half centuries.