The Bell Tower @ Emmanuel United Church of Christ - Abbottstown, PA - Bell Towers on Waymarking.com

The church is made of brick, had multiple gables of Gothic design as well as gothic styled windows and the high bell tower over the right side, above the main corner entrance. The tower is topped with a pyramidal cap and the tower is louvered on all four sides. The louvered windows come in pairs, and resemble the ten commandments, or at least, how they are portrayed as tablets. I did not hear the bells while I visited. The tower is like a large rectangular shaped pyramid and is definitely large enough to walk up so I would wager there are stairs inside of it. According to an oblong, rectangular marble stone set into the brick mid way up the bell tower, the building originally housed the Emanuel's Reformed Church. The current incarnation shares a similar name. Unfortunately, the geniuses that run the church, in their infinite wisdom, have refused to include even a brief history of their church and their building so I cannot determine the chronology of events that led up to the church we see today.

The church is located on a most scenic portion of the Lincoln Highway, the center square or circle of Abbottstown, a small rural community on the way to Gettysburg. The church is on the southern side of the circle. Aside from the tower, there is attractive stained glass on the main window in the center front of the church. There is also a curiously designed window up top on the front of the church which I think it representative of the Holy Trinity. it is triangular with curved sides and a kind of a curved triangle in the middle whose sides are of the inner sides of three triangles which make up the larger one.

I can tell by reading the multitude of old headstones in the church's burial ground to the rear, that the early partitioners of the church were German immigrants as many of the headstones are in that language. I also learned from the headstones, several of the former residents were American Revolutionary War veterans and Civil War veterans. This is a small town that gave a lot, like the other small towns scattered across the infamous highway.

Finally, there is a brown corner stone set into the northwest corner of the front of the church, under the bell tower. If facing the church it is on the right side corner. The stone has two incised dates, 1847 and 1895. Due to a paucity of history, I can only assume the 1847 represents the original construction of the church and the 1895 represents an expansion or rebuilding. The church does manage to say they have been on the square since 1768 but do not go out of their way to say it was necessarily here, therefore it is unknown where they met for the first seventy-nine years of their existence.

Parking is available out front, in a spoke like pattern around the rotary or center square or in the rear of the church, near the cemetery.