Brush Run Church
The Brush Run Church was one of the earliest congregations associated with the Restoration Movement that arose during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century.
It was the center of activity for Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son respectively, in their movement for Christian reform on the American frontier.
The birth of Alexander Campbell's first child, March 13, 1812, made the question of infant baptism of vital importance to him.
They formally accepted the Philadelphia Confession, provided they be allowed to preach and teach whatever they learned from the Holy Scriptures "regardless of any creed or formula in Christendom."
After Alexander Campbell's marriage to Miss Margaret Brown, her father deeded him a fine farm, which is now the site of Bethany, West Virginia.
[3] 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.
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.
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.
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, West Virginia.
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.
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.
