In 1786, a group of hardy souls ventured southwest from Rockbridge, Virginia to Craig’s Fort in East Tennessee, at that time the southwestern frontier. Their pastor, Archibald Scott, followed them to establish a church. Named New Providence after the church in Virginia from which some of its earliest members came, the new congregation had no permanent pastor until 1794 when the Reverend Gideon Blackburn was called to serve. The first missionary sent out from New Providence was John Gloucester, an emancipated slave educated by Blackburn, ordained as a minister in 1810. In Philadelphia, he organized and became pastor of the nation’s oldest African American Presbyterian congregation, First African Presbyterian Church.

When Blackburn left to pursue ministry among Cherokee tribes in the area in 1812, Isaac Anderson, a young pastor from Knox County, came to New Providence to replace him. In 1819, Dr. Anderson petitioned the denomination to allow him to found the Southern and Western Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, known today as Maryville College. Throughout their long history, church and college have been closely associated. Dr. Anderson, a staunch abolitionist, made certain that students of all races were welcomed. In 1819, a former slave names George Erskine studied there before being ordained and commissioned as a missionary to the Republic of Liberia. In 1875, Maryville College conferred upon Mary T. Wilson the first college degree to a woman in the state of Tennessee.

After a long and healthy season of growth at New Providence during Dr. Anderson’s tenure, Civil War broke out. Like many congregations, New Providence did not prosper. Its families were divided and scattered, and financial resources were largely cut off. When peace came in 1865, only 50 members remained of a congregation that had numbered 271 only ten years before. There was no installed pastor and would not be another until 1890. Despite its bleak situation, New Providence held out hope for a bright future. In 1886, on the occasion of its 100-year anniversary, the congregation began planning for a new building on the original site of the Maryville College campus. Two decades later, an annex was needed to accommodate a congregation that had more than doubled in size since the building was completed.

Following World War II, yet another building program was inaugurated to meet the needs of a still-growing congregation. Just over a half-mile to the southwest, land was purchased and construction began on New Providence’s current neo-Gothic stone building, directly across from Maryville High School. Dr. Thomas Graham, the congregation’s twelfth pastor who inspired the building program and personally designed the stained glass windows, died before the building was completed. The first service in the sanctuary was held on Palm Sunday 1953.