After the Treaty of Albany in 1754, what is now Perry County was legally opened to pioneers drawn by the fertile soil and abundant water of Shermans Valley. These mostly Scotch-Irish settlers suffered during Indian raids in 1756 and 1763. In April 1766, the Donegal Presbytery authorized the Toboyne, Centre, and Dix Hill congregations in what is now Perry County, and by September 1766 Thomas Ross, John Byers, Edward Allet, John Hamilton, and Hugh Alexander, representing the young Centre congregation, purchased seven acres including a burial ground from George Robinson. There the first church was built, and within a year a simple log meeting house with tree stumps for seats stood by a spring just north of Fort Robinson, at the site of an earlier Indian attack. In its early years, members often came to services armed. In 1777, the Reverend John Linn became the first minister, serving Centre, Blain, and Limestone churches near Elliottsburg; later Limestone was abandoned and Landisburg joined the charge in 1823. During Linn's 42-year pastorate, the church became established in the community. The congregation replaced its first church with a stone building in 1793, erected a wood-frame structure in 1850, added a belfry, a 24 by 40-foot Sunday School room, a parsonage, and a sexton's house in the 1890s, dug a basement for offices and rooms in the 1940s, installed stained-glass windows in the 1950s, and added a Christian education wing in 1957. Centre Church is the only one of the original churches still in use today, and more than 250 years after its founding its members continue to minister to families in Shermans Valley.