The River Brethren
Near York, Pennsylvania
Around seventeen eighty, a small group of believers gathered at Conoy Creek, just below here, and performed the first baptisms of what would become one of the earliest religious denominations founded on American soil. They called themselves the River Brethren, and they held their earliest worship services at Magdalena House, the home of founder Jacob Engel, down this lane.
The movement grew out of the revivalist currents sweeping Lancaster County in the years following the Revolution. In the mid-nineteenth century, the River Brethren formally reorganized as the Brethren in Christ Church. From that same root came two other denominations still active today: the Old Order River Brethren and the United Zion Church. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose parents came out of the River Brethren, grew up in Abilene, Kansas. That connection runs deeper than most visitors to this quiet creek-bottom ever realize.
