"The Waxhaws," deriving its name from a tribe of Indians, now extinct, was settled in the early 1750s by Scotch-Irish pioneers from Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The "Waxhaw Meeting House" was first recorded on November 23, 1755 by Hugh McAden, a missionary evangelist traveling south.
Calling for their first minister a Scottish school master, Robert Miller, the members of Waxhaw congregation received their first title to Waxhaw Church property from Miller and his wife, Jean Pickens, dated March 9, 1758.
After a mission among the Cherokee Indians, the Rev. William Richardson accepted the pastorate in 1759. His widely extended ministry, lasting until his death in 1771, made the Waxhaws the Presbyterian center of the Carolina backcountry. His remains were re-interred in the Davie Memorial in 1927 along with his nephew and namesake, Gen. W. R. Davie, and other members of the Davie family.
The first meeting house, used as a hospital during the Revolutionary War, was burned by the British after a skirmish, April 9, 1781. The next building burned following the Great Revival of 1802. A third church was built and used until the present one was erected in 1896. In the 1940s this church was brick-veneered and additions made.
The Rev. James H. Thornwell, a noted minister of the church in the pre-Civil War era, wrote, "It was here that the classics were first taught, hymns were first used in public worship, and the Presbytery of S. C. held its first meeting April 12, 1785."
Old Waxhaw Church, pioneer Presbyterian church of upper S. C., still stands as a monument to the "Faith of Our Fathers."
Copied from back of Church Bulletin
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