DREISBACH UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST - LEWISBURG, UNION COUNTY, PA
The Dreisbach Church is located in Buffalo Township, Union County, Pa., not far from the borough of Lewisburg. It is built on ground which forms part of a tract of land comprising seven and one-half acres donated by the pioneer Martin Dreisbach in 1788 to the union Lutheran and Reformed church organized in that locality on the Pennsylvania frontier. A log church was erected in 1788. Martin Dreisbach was an elder in the Reformed congregation which used the original log church, and Jacob and John Dreisbach were numbered among its members. In 1839 the log church was taken down and a brick structure was erected. It is a notable landmark in the Buffalo Valley.
The log structure was replaced in 1839 with a larger, brick building. However, when extensive structural repairs were later required it was decided to have a new building instead of repairing the old. The new church was erected in 1860. That building stood until 1963, when during construction of an addition, the south wall began to collapse. As a result the structure was replaced with the current building in 1964. Also in 1963 the Lutheran congregation decided to withdraw from the union church to establish their own church, Faith Lutheran Church near Lewisburg.
In the old churchyard adjacent to this historic building lie buried many of the Dreisbachs, including the 1751 immigrant Martin Dreisbach, born in 1717, died in 1799; his son Martin, 2nd, (1764-1831), who lived and died near the church, and his grandson, Martin, 3rd (1800-1880), the father of William Dreisbach, who was born in 1834 and died in Philadelphia in November, 1913. and was buried in the Lewisburg cemetery not far from the church which through the generosity and forethought of his ancestor has become a perpetual memory to the Dreisbach family. Truly here does Martin Dreisbach, pioneer, planter, patriot, churchman, though dead, yet speak in the solemnity of the sanctuary and the silence of this peaceful God's acre.*
*Dreisbach Family Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2 pp. 6-7, January 1914: by The Rev. Samuel A. Bridges Stopp, Historian of the Dreisbach Family Association