Our History
With a history that goes back to the early 1740’s, Salem Presbyterian Church is a new church charting a course into God’s unknown and exciting future.
Salem Church is a congregation of people with a rich heritage going back to the first Presbyterians in Hanover County. In the 1740’s a Hanover bricklayer named Samuel Morris, along with several devout neighbors, withdrew from the state approved Anglican Church and held services centered in the reading of Scripture. After a period of difficulty with local officials, this “reading room” finally obtained permission from the state to worship as Presbyterians under the 1689 Act of Toleration. In 1746 this developing congregation called a young and energetic Presbyterian minister, Samuel Davies, from New England, to be its pastor. Under Davies’ able leadership, the Pole Green Presbyterian Church was officially organized in 1748.
In 1813, or possibly earlier, a Presbyterian congregation was organized at Hanover-Town. This congregation moved to what is now Studley in 1829 and took the name Salem Presbyterian Church. The Salem and Pole Green churches united this same year in 1829, to become the United Church of Salem and Pole Green, one church in two locations. The United Church, in the 1840’s, established Beulah congregation in what is now Cold Harbor. Beulah was part of the United Church of Salem and Pole Green. During the Civil War, the Pole Green building was destroyed and the congregation there began to worship with the Salem congregation. Today a granite memorial marks the location of the former Pole Green Church building.
Because of difficult times after the War, in 1872 the United Church of Salem and Pole Green, including the Beulah congregation, united with the Bethlehem Presbyterian Church. The resulting union, the Samuel Davies Presbyterian Church, worshipped and ministered as one united church comprised of three congregations: Salem, Bethlehem, and Beulah. The name, “Pole Green” was dropped.
The three congregations of the one, united Samuel Davies Presbyterian Church, continued until 1973 when the Bethlehem Church was organized as a separate church. Salem and Beulah, the continuing church from the original Hanover Presbyterian congregation at Pole Green, remained the Samuel Davies Presbyterian Church. In 1985 each of these congregations, however, was organized by Hanover Presbytery as an individual church.
Today, the Salem Presbyterian Church, grateful for its heritage, looks toward the future confident that the one God almighty who provided for her in the past will equip her mightily for ministry in the future.
Note: Information for this short history was informed by the Short Essay Entitled: For Two Hundred Years; A Historical Sketch of The Samuel Davies Presbyterian Church, Hanover County, VA.
