An American Family History

Moses Hoge was born in Frederick County, Virginia, on February 15, 1752. He was a Scotch Presbyterian and served in the Continental army during the Revolution.

He was educated at Timber Ridge Academy in Virginia and in 1781 was ordained pastor of a Presbyterian church in Hardy County, Virginia. He was pastor there for eight years after which he was was president of Hampden Sidney College. In 1810 he received the degree of D. D. from Princeton. He published Christian Panoply in 1799 and Sermons in 1820.

In 1820 he was a delegate to the general assembly of the Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, and he died there on July 5, 1820.

Presbyterians are Protestant Christians. The denomination originated in Scotland and congregations are ruled by elected elders. Presbyterian theology follows the Calvanist tradition and emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures, and grace through faith in Christ.

The Planting of the Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia by James Robert Graham

... The county of Loudoun was laid off in 1757, and Leesburg, the county seat, was established by law one year later. ... some Presbyterian families who desired to enjoy again their own form of worship... When the Rev. David Bard was dismissed from the charge of the Kittocktin and Gum Spring churches, June, 1782, he was ordered by the committee that had released him, to supply Leesburg until the next meeting of Presbytery....Outside the Records, it seems not unlikely that Rev. Amos Thompson, and his successors at Kittocktin, had held frequent services in Leesburg before Donegal had been asked for supplies. Their readiness to call Mr. Waugh so soon after their first petition was sent, is strong proof that they must already have had some kind of an organization, and that they considered themselves strong enough to sustain a minister. Of its history for the next twenty years very little is known.

Charlestown gets its name from Col. Charles Washington, who owned the land on which it was laid out. He was the brother of Gen. George Washington. The town is older than the county, of which it is the county seat. It was established in 1786, and one year after we meet the name for the first time in Ecclesiastical Records. A supplication for ministerial supplies was sent up from this place to Carlisle Presbytery in 1787. This was probably the first direct effort made by the people in that town to obtain regular Presbyterian worship for themselves. Those of our faith and order who resided in or near the place —and they had now become quite numerous—had been accustomed to attend worship either at Bullskin or Elk Branch, the two places being about equally distan.

But the movement of this people toward independent and permanent worship did not stop, indeed, it did not begin, with their request for a preacher; they had already made arrangements to secure a place for preaching. In the same year in which their petition went up to Presbytery they purchased from Charles Washington, for "£20 current money of Virginia," a piece of land, in the South-western part of Charlestown, on which to build a Presbyterian church. The deed for this property was signed and delivered February 17,1787, and was "ordered to be recorded at a court held for Berkeley County the 18th day of April, 1787." The original deed laid in the office of the clerk of that county for almost one hundred years. In 1885 it was discovered among the papers in that office and is now in the keeping of the Board of Trustees of the Charlestown church. The deed was made "to David Kennedy, John White, Peter Burr and Jacob Conchlin (farmers)," "at the suit, and for the use of the Charlestown congregation of Presbyterians." On the lot thus purchased a small stone building was erected, which, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was replaced by a more commodious structure, also built of stone. When the present large and handsome church was built in 1852 the old church was sold to the late Maj. W. J. Hawkes, who had it taken down, stone by stone, and re-erected on another site, in exactly its original form, and was used, until very recently, as a carriage factory.