It has been said that to know where you are going it’s important to know where you have been. So for the first verger’s voice I am going to take us back to the early 1700’s. Today we think of the frontier as deep space or maybe the deepest parts of the ocean but in 1700 this was the frontier. This land called the Kittochitinny was the home of the Susquehannock and the Shawnee . It stretched from the long crooked river to the Maryland border. Bordered by mountain ranges, what we now call the Cumberland Valley was filled with timber, long stretches of grass lands, wild fruit and boundless amounts of water.
In July of 1730 twelve Scot-Irish families came to this area and built cabins along Burds Run. Burds Run is located on Britton road close to the soccer field but in 1730 it would have flowed near where CJ’s restaurant is now. By 1733 eighteen cabins had been built around the corner of what is now known as King and Queen Street. James Letort from Le tort Springs now known as Carlisle had a well known trading post here. Since more people were moving into this area, William Penn in a move to prevent Maryland from laying claim to areas to the north and to keep faith with the native Americans purchased this land from the Shawnee in 1736. In 1737, Penn asked Edward Shippen to lay out a town in this area. Shippen with the help of his son-in-law James Burd built the foundation for the town of Shippensburg.
The families of Edward Shippen and James Burd were members of the Anglican faith. It is believed that Shippen and his friends held services in private homes and some historians record stories of a small log church located near Burds Run, this may come from the fact that James Burd build a house in this area. Another tradition has it that Episcopal services were held occasionally at the Widow Pipers tavern. The earliest recorded Episcopal services held here were in 1755 and 1756 by Dr. M. Barton of York Springs. Rev. Barton traveled throughout the Cumberland Valley doing missionary work for the Anglican Society for the Propagation of Gospel in Foreign Parts and made several visits to Shippensburg. During and after the Revolutionary War, the Church of England was not viewed with favor and it would be over a hundred years before an expansion of the Episcopal Church into the local area would begin.
Then in 1864, Rev. Francis Joseph Clerc Rector of St. Johns Episcopal Church in Carlisle held services in the old white meeting house on south Penn Street. It is unknown how long this lasted but in 1880, the Rev. Henry Swentzel opened the Good Shepherd Mission that met in the second story meeting room of what is now liberty tax service. Rev. Swentzel was rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Chambersburg. To get back and forth from Chambersburg most people took the train but no trains ran on Sunday. So Rev. Schnitzel got permission from the Western Maryland railroad to use a handcar to make the trip. Services lapsed after a time and in 1889 services were resumed by Rev. Berghaus also a rector at Trinity. He conducted Services at private homes. At the time it was reported that there were three families that were members but records say that there were several families interested.
Now the year is 1900, a new decade, a new century and a man named John Clifford Phillips. A new chapter in our journey through the history of St. Andrew’s.