In 1733 a pastor by the name of Ebenezer Erskine led a group of Christians in forming an Associate Presbytery. Ten years later, another group of Christians who for years had suffered problems with the established church organized themselves into the Reformed Presbytery.

Both churches spread to Northern Ireland as the Scots were forced to emigrate and both came to America with the "Scots-Irish" folks. The immigrants came to the Pennsylvania area at first, and it was there that both the Associate and the Reformed Presbyteries of Pennsylvania were organized in the 1750-1770 time period.

Formal union talks between the "Associates" and the "Reformed" began in 1777 and by 1782 the Associate Reformed Synod came to be in Philadelphia. This Synod, even though all "Associates" and "Reformeds" did not join, included churches in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, North and South Carolina and Georgia.

Eight years later, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian of the Carolinas and Georgia was formed in Abbeville County, S.C., followed some twenty years later (1803) by the division of the entire church into four Synods and one General Synod. The Synods were those of the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New York and Scioto with the headquarters of the church in Philadelphia. In 1822 the Synod of the Carolinas was granted separate status, and by the end of the century was the sole remaining body of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as several mergers over the years had absorbed the rest of the denomination into the old United Presbyterian Church. The remaining "A.R.P.s" in the Southeast continued on as the denomination we have today. We now again have churches in the Northeastern part of the nation and Canada. There are now nine Presbyteries in North America, the Presbytery of the Northeast (Northeastern U.S. and Canada), Virginia Presbytery (Virginia and West Virginia), First Presbytery (North Carolina), Catawba Presbytery (Eastern S.C.), Second Presbytery (Western S.C. and Georgia), Florida Presbytery, Tennessee-Alabama Presbytery (Eastern Tennessee and Alabama), Mississippi Valley Presbytery (Arkansas, Missouri, Western Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi), and Pacific Presbytery (Washington, Oregon, and California).

Read more about the Associate Reformed Presbyterian .

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