Churchtown

Churchtown in Monroe Township in Cumberland County was known as “Allen” for 136 years.¹ Some current residents persist in using the Churchtown name while others prefer to use Allen. The Churchtown name originated with Casper Diller and his neighbors who moved from Churchtown in Lancaster County to this location in Cumberland in 1785.² In 1828, the postal service began to use the name Allen because of the confusion with the Lancaster Churchtown. And Allen it remained until 1964 when local addresses were assigned to Boiling Springs.³

After the Shawnee Indians departed the Cumberland area for Ohio in the 18th century, the Scots-Irish and then the Germans moved in. By the end of that century, a few homes and the Mt. Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church (1795) had begun to populate the area.⁴ Local tradition asserts that Jacob Wise built the first house within the boundaries of today’s village in 1804.⁵ The community, however, developed very slowly. The next thirty years saw about twenty-five houses in the village. By mid-19th century, the village could boast a population of about 240 people in sixty-five families.⁶ Today, it remains a small cross-roads community.

Several churches emerged in the Churchtown community. Two currently grace the town. The Mt. Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church dates itself to 1795 although its origins in the Lutheran and Reformed church groups predate this. The Churchtown Church of God with its present day carillon began in 1832 and has seen growth and change in congregation and buildings.⁷ Town historians note the religious opposition in 1833 against a John Zollinger from Carlisle when he started a new sect, which lasted only briefly, in the village.⁸

Churchtown was always a small village in an agrarian setting. Typical cultural and business activities emerged: public school, blacksmith, taverns. 1902 saw a hosiery mill constructed in Churchtown; it employed up to thirty women and girls. A trolley line that ran through the town provided access for country girls to commute to the factory.⁹ But the business was short-lived. A lack of a railroad line caused businesses to move to metropolitan areas with transportation facilities and left Churchtown to become and remain an attractive bedroom community for Harrisburg and the West Shore.¹⁰

Prominent residents provide Churchtown with a claim to fame. The family of Davy Crockett resided here in the late 1700s. Jacob Ritner, son of the future governor, Joseph Ritner, bought a town lot in 1830. Jacob Plank invented “the Plank Plow and his son, Sam, invented the Plank Shifting Beam Plow.”¹¹

Today, the Monroe Township building rests at the edge of town. A modern school likewise greets travelers driving west on route 174. The town itself is indeed a small, attractive, cross-roads community common throughout Cumberland County and Pennsylvania., but a town whose history is kept alive by its residents.¹²