Willimantic Camp Meeting Association (1860-1948)

Camp meetings were a notable feature of religious life in nineteenth-century America and some continue in existence today. This site has already featured the Plainville Campground and Camp Bethel in Haddam. Another religious campground is the Willimantic Camp Meeting Association. It was established by Methodists who held the first meeting here on September 3, 1860. Today it is an interdenominational Evangelical Association. At its height the camp had 300 buildings, primarily cottages built by individual churches or families. A third of them were destroyed by the hurricane of 1938 and another hundred were lost to neglect over the ensuing decades. 100 cottages remain and constitute an architectural treasure.

Barrows Cottage is the oldest of the cottages on the grounds. In the early twentieth century, it was donated by its owner, Nettie Barrow, to be a place of comfort for the camp’s guest preachers:

In the image below are, from left to right, the Children’s Building, the Library and the Haven (known after 1907 as the Ladies’ Improvement Society).

Victoria House began as “Mother Browne’s Cottage” in 1948. Her daughter Charlotte married Dr. Albert Mayers and the couple later remodeled the Queen Anne cottage to become a Christian retreat center. They also founded the Beacon Trust, comprised of Boston University School of Theology, the Willimantic Camp Meeting Association and the United Methodist Conference. Victoria House was given to the Willimantic Camp Meeting Association in January 2003: