Camp meeting groves were a common occurrence in Pennsylvania in the 1800’s. Very few remain. The Patterson Grove Camp meeting in Luzerne County is still going strong. According to its website, Patterson Grove is situated in a sugar maple grove on the banks of Kitchen’s Creek near the junction with Huntington Creek 5 miles south of Ricketts Glen State Park. It includes just over 100 cottages and an open-air tabernacle.

A Danville Businessman, G.M. Shoop purchased twenty-eight acres to purchase and establish the Mountain Grove Camp Meeting in 1872, located equally distant from Bloomsburg and Hazleton. It was located on the Danville, Hazleton, and Wilkes-Barre Railroad in Black Creek Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Before sharing more on some of the camp meetings in north central Pennsylvania, let’s look at the history of the movement in the United States.

Originally camp meetings were held in frontier areas, where people without regular preachers would occasionally travel from a large region to a particular site to camp, pray, sing hymns, and listen to itinerant preachers at the Tabernacle. Camp meetings offered community, often singing and other music, sometimes dancing, and diversion from work. The practice was a major component of the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical movement promoted by Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and other preachers in the early 19th century. [1]

Reverend Earl E. Kerstetter, who served as a Methodist Minister, including a pastorate in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, provided information on its origin.

“The camp meeting of the nineteenth century came into being on the Kentucky frontier in July of 1800. Along the Gasper River, a Presbyterian preacher named James McGready had held revivals that attracted an increasing number of people. This preacher of vivid speech and fearless courage invited several fellow Presbyterian clergies and a number of Methodist preachers to participate in a sacramental meeting, which was probably the first planned camp meeting in this country.”

The early Camp Meetings, which also included Baptist congregations eventually fell out of favor with that denomination and the Presbyterians. But it became a mainstay within the Methodist denomination.

Kerstetter, in his story reports, “Bishop Francis Asbury, the greatest Methodist episcopal leader in the earliest years of the nineteenth century, urged the presiding elders (now, district superintendents) to turn the summer Quarterly Conferences into camp meetings whenever feasible. These meetings were usually two to four days in length. Asbury was convinced of the great spiritual benefits resulting from these outdoor revivals. His enthusiasm was expressed in the statement, "Methodists are all for camp meetings." He was well pleased when preachers reported successful camp meetings. He was, however, strongly opposed to the more fanatical behavior frequently seen and emphasized there should be order at all times. “

Kerstetter continued, “The first Methodist camp meeting of record was in Central Pennsylvania and was held in the summer of 1805 about two miles below Milton along the Chillisquaque Creek. Flavel Roan of Lewisburg attended two years later and recorded this in his journal dated September 19, 1807: "Sunday at camp... The moon shining through the trees, the fire, the candles in the camp, and the large quiet crowd of people, made a scene romantic and solemn. 20th -- Great carrying on at camp. Criswell's boys got happy."

Kerstetter noted that the Juniata Valley Camp Meeting Association bought land and improvements for $13,000 in 1872. Located near Newton Hamilton in Mifflin County, the grounds were later formally purchased by the Conference and became the Methodist Training Camp. This was the only such property in which the Annual Conference ever had financial interests and authority, and it was sold in 1958.

Other camp meetings were commonplace in central Pennsylvania, the West Branch Valley, Herndon, Shamokin Dam, and Oak Grove near Lewisburg were or are still in operation.    

In an article written by Craig A. Newton, Up at Mountain Grove (1872-1901), he described the beginnings of that camp meeting.

“The selection of the location owed to several considerations. Mountain Grove lay near the geographic center of the approximately 1000 square miles bisected by the North Branch, with Bloomsburg its most nearly central town, which comprised the district. Bloomsburg is only seventeen miles by road west of Mountain Grove, and Hazleton, a larger city and an anthracite mining community, is the same distance to the east. The land available there satisfied the requirements of a permanent camp meeting. And so, in June of 1872, Danville businessman G.M. Shoop purchased twenty-eight acres with the announced intention of transferring them to a camp meeting association specifically organized to manage the affair. Adequate roads led into Mountain Grove from three directions. The Danville, Hazleton, and Wilkes-Barre Railroad, leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad, passed within a few yards of the property. Just a few years earlier the railroad had constructed a station adjacent to what would become the main entrance to the grounds.”

Newton described Shoop as “A wealthy lumberman and real estate investor, (who) served as association secretary and manager of the campgrounds throughout the 1870's.” Other clergy and business people were instrumental in Mountain Grove’s beginnings and its success. “Presiding Elder Barnes, its first president; Reverend S. Creighton, pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church in Danville; A.J. Ammerman, Danville businessman-investor who in 1869 had won election as the borough Burgess; B.G. Welch, association secretary-treasurer and general manager of Danville's Glendower Iron Works; E.M. Wardin, association vice president and editor of The Columbia County Republican until 1875; and Mordecai W. Jackson, founder and co-proprietor of the Jackson & Woodin Manufacturing Company in Berwick. By the early 1880s, E.W.M. Low, a prosperous merchant and operator of the limestone quarry in Columbia County, and his neighbor Z.T. Fowler, a feed and grain dealer, played conspicuous roles in the association, as did Lloyd T. Sharpless, the son of a wealthy manufacturer and himself a capable businessman and a member of the Bloomsburg Town Council. The financial and social standing of the leaders of the association contributed to the prospects of success for the meeting at Mountain Grove.” 

But Newton’s article says, the place of worship began to evolve into more of a vacation spot. “Within 20 years of the campground's opening, the majority of the people going there were there for a vacation, and trains carried bands and other entertainment-related items to the campground. However, people still continued to go there in large numbers for camp meeting. Local newspapers also began to advertise the campground as a resort instead of a camp meeting site. This began with an advertisement written by John R. Rote, secretary of the Mountain Grove Camp Meeting Association, in the Columbia County Republican on July 9, 1891”

In the 21^st Century, the Patterson Grove Camp Meeting is still going strong, and shares a history of its beginnings on its website: “In 1868 the first Camp meeting was held on this site. Samuel F. Headley, who gave the Trustees the deed, spoke these words: “I by this deed transfer the trust to the Board of Trustees approved and appointed by the Quarterly Conference of this circuit – and I trust, Sir, that it may not be considered out of place to publicly, as I have in private, pray that this place may be ever watered with the Dew of Heaven – that it’s beauty may remain and that our children and our children’s children to the latest period of time may meet upon this Consecrated spot, and bow, with humility and in prayer and praise truly worship our Father and our God, and receive from Him the fullness of the Blessing of the Gospel of Christ.” (Quoted from Volume 1, records of the Trustees’ meeting and early Camp meetings).

An historical marker dedicated in 2010 reads “Despite a fire on September 7, 1893, that destroyed between 200 and 300 cottages, members rebuilt.”

The website information for the campground explains, “Mary Denison Patterson, for whom the Campground was named, was born Mary Denison. Her father, Col. Nathan Denison, was one 0f the original forty settlers 0f Wyoming Valley, served as second in command at the Battle of Wyoming, July 3, 1778, and was later one of the leading citizens of the Valley.”

The Christian History Institute reports that when (Bishop) Francis Asbury came to the colonies in 1771, there were only 600 American Methodists. When he died 45 years later, there were 200,000 American Methodists. The number had grown from 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 40 of the total population of the country, largely because of camp meetings and circuit riders.