The Northwest Territory was rendered attractive to settlement by individuals from this country and Europe following the enactment of the Ordinance of 1787.  After the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, settlement within the interior of Ohio became legal and fairly safe from Indian raids.  Fairfield County was a large area of almost unbroken wilderness.  It then comprised all of what is now Knox, Licking, Fairfield, and parts of Perry, Hocking and Pickaway Counties.  The way to it from the east was Zane’s Trace, which was simply a blazed trail from Wheeling, Virginia, to Limestone, Kentucky, which Colonel Ebenezer Zane had been hired by the United States government to make in 1796.  For his labors, Col. Zane received three tracts of land, one square mile each.  Lancaster was founded on the tract that crossed the Hock Hocking.

The first tracts of land were sold on November 10, 1800.  The town was named New Lancaster in honor of the settlers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Two years later, in 1802, at the organization of the Synod of Pittsburgh, the Presbytery of Ohio reported New Lancaster as “vacant and able to support a pastor.”

Reported by a traveling missionary, classes and religious meetings were being held in cabins in the area of Lancaster as early as 1799, with “varying degrees of success,” but he found the people of Lancaster “hungry for the Bread of Life.”

The year 1803 brought the Rev. John Wright, a twenty-five year old Presbyterian missionary to the settlement.  New Lancaster was not very pretentious, although it was laid out on a grid system, with the streets crossing one another at right angles.  The cabins were usually small with paper window lights oiled with bear grease or hot oil.  Stumps of forest trees were found in the streets, Wyandotte and Delaware Indians roamed the countryside in small hunting bands, and wild game such as black bear, deer and wild turkeys graced the tables of the settlers.

By 1805, the town was growing rapidly, the name was shortened to Lancaster, and the majority of the 400 inhabitants were of German extraction.  In those days, the church was called by a name which was different from the town in which it was located.  In accordance with that custom, the church here was called “Hock Hocking”, later being abbreviated to Hocking, and not until 1819 to “The First Presbyterian Church of Lancaster.” 

The call to the Rev. John Wright was signed by the representatives of the united congregations of Hocking and Rushcreek on March 15, 1805, and accepted in October of that same year.  His salary was $300.00 per year.

The first Court House was constructed in 1807 at the corners of Main and Broad Streets.  It was used by all the denominations in town as a place of worship.  This was the beginning of the “Hocking Congregation.”