Brush Run Church - History of The Meeting House

History of The Meeting House

The meeting house was located in Washington County, Pennsylvania on the farm of William Gilchrist in the valley of the Brush Run, about two miles (3 km) above the junction of that stream with Buffalo Creek. Currently, the original location of the building is commemorated by a stone marker.

John Boyd who had a saw mill on Brush Run a short distance from the construction site was contracted, with the help of members, to build the Meeting House. The congregation of Christian reformers was evolving from the Christian Association of Washington (Pennsylvania). The Meeting House was then used in conjunction with the "Cross Roads" log building, in which the Association had been meeting, and replaced a temporary shelter (often called a "brush arbor") which had been used on this site for preaching -- including Alexander Campbell's first sermon. This site was located on a "Saddle Ridge" between Hanen Creek and Brush Run on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land transferred ($1.00 bill-of-sale) from the farm of William Gilchrist, an active member of the Association and one of four deacons in the new congregation. The building and congregation were soon known as the Brush Run Church, despite the fact that on the Ordination Certificate of Alexander Campbell (1812), the ordaining body is referred to as "The First Christian Church of the Christian Association of Washington."

The actual Meeting House, a post and beam structure pinned together with wooden pins, was a treasure in framing and could be taken down and moved. Never completely finished and having ceased to be used regularly, with churches now developed in the home communities of many members, the church building was sold to George McFadden, dismantled and moved to West Middletown in 1842. Here he used it as his blacksmith shop until appointed postmaster in 1869 at which time he located the post office in this building. When he retired William Anderson, the neighbor across the road, received the building as a gift for his willingness to move it. On the Anderson property it served as a barn and stable, until visitors from the 1909 Centennial Convention held in Pittsburgh, PA some thirty miles distance, instituted a program to reconstruct, from remaining timbers, the old Meeting House onto the Campbell Homestead in Bethany, WV.

The picture reproduced above right is a drawing of the Meeting House when it served as a post office following several years as a blacksmith shop. This becomes evident by observing in the picture the letter slot in the door (i.e. post office) and the well worn chimney top (i.e. blacksmith furnace heat) remembering that this Meeting House, on its original location, had no means of heating. Subsequent paintings of the structure apparently used this drawing as an example, placing the slot in the door, worn chimney at roof ridge and showing the drooping clapboard siding on the front.

According to The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, the Brush Run meeting house was sold in 1842 and moved to West Middletown, Pennsylvania. It was eventually moved to the Campbell homestead. The structure deteriorated, and the remainder of the structure was removed in 1990.