Location: US 64 northeast of Rutherfordton
County: Rutherford
Original Date Cast: 1951
In the mid-eighteenth century thousands of Scots-Irish settlers arrived in North Carolina having traveled the Great Wagon Road south from Philadelphia. Establishing small communities in the North Carolina Piedmont, these individuals formed the earliest Presbyterian churches in the colony.
Brittain Presbyterian Church, the oldest such house of worship in Rutherford County, formed in 1768 under the guidance of Reverend Daniel Thacker and three elders named Samuel Andrews, James Mitchell and Samuel Reid. Establishing a small congregation, the churchgoers set about constructing the first church building on the site, a small log structure on seven acres of land donated by John Long.
The church provided a meeting ground for Patriot forces during the American Revolution. Several casualties of the Battle of Kings Mountain are buried in the church cemetery including Lt. Thomas McCullough, a rifleman from Virginia who died at Brittain while recuperating from his wounds.
In 1800, the church moved to a new frame building nearly two miles from the original site onto land given to the church by William Porter. Fifty-two years later, however, the church elders moved the congregation back to the original site, where they constructed a brick building that is standing presently.
Asheville Citizen Times, January 12, 1941
“Brittain Church Cemetery,” unpublished manuscript in Research Branch, Office of Archives and History, Raleigh
Clarence W. Griffin, The History of Old Tryon and Rutherford Counties (1937)