Their pastor, Robert Armstrong, had preceded them.
Armstrong was born and raised in Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and was ordained a minister on June 15, 1797.
Four members of the Seceders church had settled near Lexington, Ky. In 1796, they applied to the synod of Scotland for a minister. The synod sent two: Armstrong and Andrew Fulton.
The pastors arrived in Kentucky in 1798. Armstrong became the pastor to the Davis Fork, Miller’s Run and Cane Run church in April 1799.
Five years later, he helped facilitate the move to Greene County, where the group formed the united congregation of Massie’s Creek and Sugarcreek.
The choice of Greene County was made because of the influence of James Galloway Sr. He had visited a relative, Samuel Galloway in Kentucky in 1802. There Galloway met Armstrong and invited him to Ohio. Armstrong came and preached at Galloway’s house, at James Clency’s house in Bellbrook, and at James Lowry’s near Enon. The Ohio residents then asked Armstrong to relocate to the area.
After the details for the move were worked out, Armstrong returned to Kentucky and married Nancy Andrew. The couple visited relatives in Tennessee before coming to Ohio by horseback. Their household goods and books were brought by a four-horse team and wagon driven by William Gowdy, who had gone to Kentucky to help them move. The Armstrongs lived with the Galloway’s for the first winter.
In 1805, Armstrong finished a log cabin with a stone chimney. His house was 13 miles from the Sugarcreek church building and four miles to the Massie’s Creek one. He often walked to both places and solved the problem of crossing the river by using a pair of two-foot high stilts.
The Massie’s Creek building was built on three acres donated by James Stevenson, on the north side of Massie’s Creek near Cedarville. There was no stove or chimney in the first building. “Men and women would ride or walk twelve or fifteen miles to this church and sit and listen to two sermons without seeing fire in the coldest weather,” according to George F. Robinson’s “History of Greene County.”
In 1811, a church building for the Sugarcreek Seceders was built in the northeast corner of the Pioneer Associate grave yard north of Bellbrook.
Armstrong worked with the two groups for seventeen years. He died on October 14, 1821, and was buried in the cemetery at Massie’s Creek.
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