After a four month journey on horseback from Connecticut at the age of 34 years, Congregational missionary Salmon Giddings arrived in St. Louis on April 5, 1816. His first sermon was preached in the home of the Stephen (Sr.) and Chloe Hempstead family. On November 15, 1817 Giddings organized a small St. Louis group into The First Presbyterian Church of St. Louis with 10 charter members, half of the members being from the Hempstead family. The first two ruling elders were Stephen Hempstead Sr. and Thomas Osborne. First Presbyterian Church is therefore the first and oldest protestant church founded in St. Louis with continuous unbroken history.

 The congregation’s first building was completed in 1825 and was located on Fourth Street between St. Charles and Washington Avenues (then the western edge of the city) and was completed at a cost of $8,000, $5,827 of which was debt. The list of those people who made financial contributions to the building fund includes President John Quincy Adams who contributed $25.00 to the cause. This building housed the First Church congregation until 1855. In November of 1827 Giddings was installed by the newly formed Presbytery of Missouri as Pastor of First Church, the only protestant church in St. Louis.

 Elijah Lovejoy arrived in St. Louis in 1827 and, after attending a series of revivals, became a member of First Presbyterian Church. The then pastor Dr. Potts encouraged Mr. Lovejoy to go to seminary and he eventually studied at Princeton. Later Lovejoy was to become an ardent abolitionist and died defending his press in Alton, Illinois.

 From 1838 until 1855 Rev. Artemus Bullard served as Pastor of First Church. First Church was constantly growing in membership and each time the membership would reach 200, Rev. Bullard set about commissioning some of them to organize a new church.  Bullard was instrumental in sending out charter members of seven churches: Second Presbyterian, Pine Street (now Westminster), Third (now First Congregational), North, Spruce Street, Union (now Union Methodist), and Rock Hill Presbyterian. In October 1855 a second and larger church building was dedicated at 14^th and Locust. On November 1, 1855 Rev. Bullard and two church deacons were killed when the train they were on plunged into the Gasconade river.

 Replacing Rev. Bullard was difficult, as a cholera epidemic beginning in 1849 had given St. Louis a reputation as an undesirable place to live. At that time First Church belonged to the “New School” branch of the Presbyterian Church (as opposed to “Old School”) which had few ministers at the time. Further, most “New School” churches were in the north. Missouri was a slave state and not attractive to most of the “New School.”

 The minister that eventually accepted the call to First Church was Rev. Henry A. Nelson, who was pastor from 1856-1868. Soon after his arrival, Nelson declared an anti-slavery position from the pulpit, which resulted in the withdrawal of several slave-holding families from the church. During the Civil War, the church flew the Union flag on its tower, despite the hazards of doing so in Missouri. The church’s support of the Union gained it an enormous amount of financial support when Rev. Nelson traveled east to try to secure loans and contributions to pay off the church’s large debt.

 The congregation’s third building was located at Sarah and Washington Streets and was occupied from 1888-1927. In 1926 a joint committee of the church and presbytery made a report to the congregation after which the congregation voted to move west again, to its current location at 7200 Delmar in University City. The decision was also made that a church should continue at the Washington and Sarah location. Giddings Presbyterian Church was organized with the 200+ members who did not move west with First Church. One hundred sixty-five members constituted First Presbyterian Church at that point, and they worshipped for a time at the Tivoli Theatre and then the Masonic Temple on Delmar before beginning construction of the new building. Around the time of the dedication of the new building, the congregation called R. Calvin Dobson as its pastor, who served the church from 1927-1957, until he was over 80 years old.

 In 1965 the church called Rev. Johnstone G. Patrick to be its pastor. Dr. Patrick served the congregation until 1983 and was later designated Pastor Emeritus of the congregation.

The current congregation of just over 100 members was most recently served by Rev. Kelly S. Allen from November of 1997 until July of 2007.