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The Rev. Stephen Bloomer Balch, D.D. began visiting Frederick in October, 1780. He had just become established at Georgetown, at the junction of Rock Creek and the Potomac, in what is now the District of Columbia but which was then a hamlet of Frederick County, Maryland. Founding the Georgetown Presbyterian Church in March 1780, Rev. Balch began a ministry which was to terminate with his death, September 7, 1883.

During the trying days of the Revolutionary War, three years before the close of the struggle, and a year before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Rev. Balch heard of a little group of Presbyterians at Frederick. He began making the forty-mile trip to Frederick by horseback monthly and sometimes fortnightly to conduct services, marry couples, baptize children and perform other pastoral duties. The whole country was at unrest during this period of fear, suspicion and hate. There were clashes with Indians and Tories, of which a number of the latter were cruelly executed in Frederick. Several hundred Hessian prisoners of war were quartered in barracks in the town. Yet at such a time, Rev. Dr. Balch succeeded in organizing both the Frederick and Georgetown congregations which have existed to this day. He continued to minister to both congregations until 1790 when he relinquished his Frederick charge to concentrate upon the one in Georgetown.

During his ministry the Frederick Presbyterian congregation was organized and connected with the Presbytery of Donegal. It was transferred to the Presbytery of Baltimore when the latter was organized in 1786, and it is one of the four churches which has been a member of this Presbytery from its inception to the present day.

It is significant to remember that just four years after the Declaration of Independence the "English Presbyterian Church" had its beginning in Frederick. The earliest historian of this Church, writing in 1831 in the first volume of Session minutes, remarked: "For the sake of distinguishing themselves from the 'German Reformed Presbyterians' who are numerous in this place, this association of individuals adopted the distinctive appellation of the English Presbyterians." In doctrine, form of worship, and in church government these two bodies were practically identical. The hindrance to union was the German language, in which all the services of the German Reformed Presbyterians," (now the Evangelical Reformed Church), were conducted.

Plans for building a new church were discussed as early as 1817 and the lot on West Second Street was purchased in 1819, although the church was not completed until 1825. It lay across the street from the Frederick Academy, the school of which the Presbyterian pastor of that time, the Rev. Patrick Davidson, was principal (One earlier principal was Dr. Samuel Knox, who was one of the first part-time pastors of the Presbyterian Church, 1797-1802.) An early photograph of the church, taken some decades after this time, shows stepping stones leading across Second Street to the Academy side. To raise funds for erecting the new building, the Trustees, according to an account compiled about 1925 by Mr. S.E. Brown, decided to use a lottery, but apparently without complete success. Eventually other plans for securing the needed funds were employed.

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