Meditation on 1 Cor. 3, selected verses (MSG)
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
The Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
Oct. 5, 2025, in honor of our 200th/350th anniversaries
Four years ago, when I was in conversation with a committee seeking a pastor for the Presbyterian church in Smithtown, I was curious how a congregation could endure so many years. They eloquently shared the church’s story, or at least the last 100 years or so, of pastors who stayed for decades, shepherding a diverse body of people. The story includes some difficult interim periods between called pastors, when the people missed their beloved ministers, felt like sheep without a shepherd, struggled to carry on, and lost their peace.
But I could see that the church had weathered many storms and had remained strong in hope and faith, with God’s grace. I felt compassion for the group that desired their ministry to be made known to their community, and not just the familiar white building with a clock tower looming over one of the busiest intersections in town. They did not want to be seen as a relic of the past or museum.
We don’t know the exact day or even the season when the first church is organized in Smithtown. No records remain concerning its formation. But historians believe that the year is 1675. And that the first church is this church.
Nine years have passed, in 1675, since Richard Smith receives the clear title to the lands comprising Smith’s Town.[1] Smith, an immigrant from England, had come to the New World with a tide of religious refugees seeking freedom from persecution, land to farm, and a community in which to raise their children to live out their dreams. Smith’s church in 1675 is more like a family chapel. The little wood meeting house is built on a frontier settlement on a rise of a hill off a dirt wagon path, where Moriches and Nissequogue River roads intersect.[2]
Smith and his family aren’t Presbyterians. They are Congregationalists, free to govern their individual churches without interference from any higher church authority. They are free to draft their own statements of belief and decide on their manner of worship. Congregational churches had been in existence on Long Island for 25 years in 1675, but only one Presbyterian Church had been founded; that church was planted in Jamaica three years before at the western end of Long Island.[3] There were no presbyteries in America in the 1600s. The Presbytery of Philadelphia would be formed in 1706, followed by the Synod of Philadelphia in 1717. The first General Assembly would be called more than a century after our congregation was founded—in 1789, after the Revolutionary War, with the creation of a national Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
In the 1600s and 1700s on Long Island, there aren’t enough pastors for every Congregational church and little money to pay them. Smith’s family and neighbors solve the problem by sharing pastors with the Congregational Church of Setauket in the early years. The first minister is probably Nathaniel Brewster, who serves Setauket from 1665 to 1690.[4] Brewster is among the first graduation class of 9 men from Harvard College. Our first recorded minister is shared with Setauket, as well, beginning in 1697; he is George Phillips, another Harvard grad.[5] Richard Smith passes away in 1692, but his children and their families and neighbors continue to gather at the meeting house.[6]
Finally, the church is able to call its first resident minister in 1712—a 28-year-old Yale grad named Daniel Taylor, who takes on a second job as the town clerk. Another pastor, Abner Reeve, is called to serve the flock at the meeting house in 1735. The 25-year-old Yale grad is from Southold, Long Island.[7]
The little flock decides to become affiliated with the Suffolk Presbytery a few years later, though some members are reluctant to give up their Congregationalist leanings. Then in 1750, they sense the Lord leading them to a new mission field. The business center of the Town, which had grown to about 700 people, had evolved in our present general location. So, the little wooden building is dismantled and reassembled here on donated land from Obadiah and Epenetus Smith.[8]
The flock in 1750 numbers just 7 people, who, at the time, don’t have a resident pastor. They are in one of those uncomfortable interim periods. Napthali Dagget, a Yale grad, who would be ordained here in September 1751, dedicates the rebuilt Church. The seven members are Obadiah Smith, Susannah Smith, George Phillips, Elizabeth Phillips, William Saxton, Dorcas Saxton, and Mary Blydenburgh.[9]
It is an act of hope and faith and God’s grace for the fledgling congregation. Soon after the relocation, 14 more people join, including a man named Peter with no last name, an African American who may have been brought here as a slave in his youth.[10]
The congregation has some tough times ahead. The early part of the Church’s second century is one of political and religious turmoil.[11]
The colonists are defeated in the Battle of Long Island. The entire island falls under British military rule in 1776. Some residents flee across the Sound to Connecticut. Those who stay are harassed by British troops. These troops help themselves to 6,396 feet of lumber from our meeting house and from the fencing and horse sheds on the property.[12] And our minister from 1774 to 1787, the outspoken patriot Joshua Hartt, a Princeton grad, is fired on by a British soldier during a worship service. He is arrested and placed in British prisons on several occasions.[13]
By 1797, the church is struggling. Session records say that the congregation is “destitute of a pastor and … in a deranged and broken situation.”[14] The Presbytery advises the divided church to draw up a covenant that each member would sign. And they do. The congregation promises to “watch over one another in the Love of the Lord and give up (themselves and theirs) to the discipline of the Church, according to the direction of Christ.”[15] They promise to “hold Communion with each other in the Word of God, and in the careful and diligent Use of the Ordinance of Jesus Christ, so long as (they) continue together in this relation(ship) by the Grace of God.”[16]
Disagreement continues between factions in the congregation in 1810, this time, over the use of the meeting house. Caleb Smith, President of the Board of Trustees, orders that “no person be permitted to enter without permission.”[17] The following year, in 1811, a new minister comes, Bradford Marcy, who serves Smithtown and Babylon concurrently, and during his pastorate, Articles of Agreement are drawn up reuniting dissenting members.[18]
About a decade before the congregation begins its first Sunday School, the first schoolhouse in Smithtown, where the poet Walt Whitman taught for 2 years, is organized in 1802 in a small frame building on the western boundary of our church property.[19] I wonder if the Sunday School came about as an outreach to the students next door to the church? In 1813, our church is incorporated with the name we carry today: the First Presbyterian Church in Smithtown.[20] A Female Charitable Society, the first women’s association of our church, is organized in 1816.[21] All of this is taking place in the original meeting house building.
In 1823, the congregation votes to build a new church. The Trustees have $1,410 for that purpose,[22] and the builder will be George Curtiss.[23] The flock waits two years after their new house of worship is finished in 1825—till all the debts have cleared—before this building is dedicated for a holy use.[24] Ithmar Pillsbury, a minister representative of the presbytery, presides over the service on Sept. 9, 1827, because the church is, once again, without a resident pastor.[25]
It is another leap of faith for the now 32 members.[26] With the new building, the pastoral leadership of the Rev. Pillsbury, installed in 1830, the congregation’s outreach, and by the grace of God, the church grows by 52 new members, and will rise again in 1840, under a new pastor’s leadership. Many of the old Smithtown names are recorded at this time: Smith, Blydenburgh, Wheeler, Miller, Mills, Hallock, Arthur, Saxton, Hawkins, Conkling, Davis, Wood, Vail, and Bailey.[27]
Today, as we rededicate this sanctuary and ourselves for a holy use, and celebrate 350 years of ministry, we give thanks for all Christ’s followers who came before us who gave of their time, treasures, and talents—from all that they had, all that they were, and all that they would become. The seeds of faith were sown long ago in the hearts of the pioneers who came from the Old World to the New and planted and watered the seeds in their children.
As we move forward into our future, the next 350 years, we are called to continue to plant and water and pray for the growth. May we never forget that it’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of the process, but God, who makes things grow. May we be forever grateful to the foundation of the spiritual building already laid for us all: Jesus Christ.
The Lord, who was with our ancestors, is with us still. Our call to love and serve God and neighbor has never changed, though Smithtown hardly resembles the tiny, pioneer town it once was.
Dear friends, may we leap like a deer over every obstacle and weather every storm like an oak tree. May we never forget where we came from—a little wooden meeting house on the rise of a hill, off a dirt wagon path, where Moriches and Nissequogue River roads intersect.
May we embrace our history but never get stuck in the past. May we forgive one another and dwell in peace during times of uncomfortable transitions and uncertainty. May we lean into our future with courage, hope, faith, and God’s grace, without any second guessing, no looking back with regrets. May we remember that WE and not the building, no matter how precious it is to us, are God’s house, a holy temple, and servants of our Master Lord.
Let us pray.
Holy God, we thank you for the centuries of ministry in the name of your Risen Son, and that you have empowered us in this place and in a little wooden meeting house at the intersection of two dirt wagon paths, on the rise of a hill. Thank you for all your beloved children who have come before us, worshiped here, loved one another, served this community, planted seeds, watered, and prayed for growth. Guide us into the future with courage, hope, faith, and grace. Amen.
Here is a link to the Presbyterian News Service article of our anniversary celebration:
[1] J. Richard Mehalick, Church and Community: 1675-1975, the Story of the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY (Second Edition, 2010), 17.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 