This is a sad story. One of the oldest historic buildings in the Wellsboro area steeped in tradition and history is falling in on itself. This 178 year old Church was built in 1840 at the Ansonia Junction by the Presbyterian Church to minister to the lumberjacks who worked in the canyon area. The junction was then little more than a forested wilderness. It was built on the site of the meeting tree which was an ancient oak tree that was the meeting site for the Iroquois councils held by the native people that set up summer trading camps in the Ansonia valley for many hundreds of years. My great great grandfather, a civil war veteran is buried there behind the church as are many of my relatives including my grandmother and grandfather. The north side of the roof is rotted and leaking badly with a big gaping hole in it. It has deteriorated greatly in one year. If just one half of the roof was restored it could be saved..One more year and will fall in on itself and sadly be rotted beyond redemption. A shame as so many historic buildings and what was the unique historical architectural character of the Wellsboro area have already been lost in the 1970s to development..
Ansonia church history. Tioga County Agitator- January 6,1880
The Rev. James F. Calkins has just been dismissed at his own request from the pastoral care of the Presbyterian Church in Wellsboro, Pa. He had held that office in this one church for almost thirty-six years. He went to Wellsboro when it was the merest hamlet. Indeed the principal center to which his ministry was first directed was to a point on Pine Creek, ten miles south of Wellsboro. William E. Dodge & Co., held large sections of land in that region, as they do still. The country was a wilderness, and but few settlers had come in, but Mr. Dodge wanted a young man of undoubted resolution, ability and piety to do pioneer work for that large tract of territory unvisited as yet by the feet of an evangelist. His message to Auburn Theological Seminary was, “Send us the right man and I will build him a church and be responsible for his salary. Mr. Calkins, just graduating from the senior class, was selected and well did he justify the choice.
The young minister did not turn back when he saw how rough the hold was, but plunged into the wilds with the eagerness and endurance of a true apostle. He made himself at home in the cabins of the hardy settlers and fire camps of Mr. Dodge’s lumberman. Of a sinewy if not stalwart frame he was equally an expert at studying Greek, composing and delivering sermons, felling trees, holding a plow or building a house. His handsome premises in Wellsboro were cleared and cultivated under his personal and manual direction. The rough men of the woods took kindly to such a man and minister and gave him their confidence and were molded by him to manners, morals, and religion.
As Wellsboro grew in importance he went there to reside, still going long distances up Pine Creek on stated and occasional preaching tours. He was in truth, Shepard over all the flock in the wide wilderness going everywhere on his errands of Christian duty. Nobody could be married or buried without his presence and there was no cabin on the mountainside or in the deep valleys he had not brightened with his cheerful endeavors. The Church at Wellsboro was formed with fifteen members, its house of worship contracted for, built and paid for under his provision and supervision with many a hard days labor in obtaining material and putting it into shape. For to this man of all work nothing seemed hard to do that went to uphold the community in virtue or the Church in strength and Godliness.
And thus he labored on with the largest expenditure of talent and strength on the smallest income of salary until things wore the look of prominence and abounding prosperity. Five hundred persons have been received by him into that fold of the once feeble church. Wellsboro has grown into the highest busiest town in Northern Pennsylvania-the home of wealth, the center of refinement and influence for a large and thrifty population recanting the once unbroken forest. Prominent citizens in the fine town became Mr. Calkins valuable laborers in all good works, such men as Judge Williams then whom the Keystone State has no more able and upright jurist not refusing to serve on his bench of elder.
