St. Joseph’s Parish in New Britain was established on April 9, 1896. Father Richard Moore held the parish’s first mass in the basement of St. Peter Church on Franklin Square in New Britain. Ground for St. Joseph Church was broken on November 1, 1896 and the church was dedicated by Bishop Michael A. Tierney on September 19, 1897. The church features elements of the Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival styles.
The East Berlin United Methodist Church was first organized as the East Berlin Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864. Services were held at various locations until a church building was completed in 1876. This small building was enlarged to to become the current church at 139 Main Street in 1896. That same year a parsonage was also constructed. The building once had an original Tiffany stained glass window. The church was restored after it was damaged by a fire in 1949.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Parish in Northford was first organized in 1763 and their first church was consecrated by Bishop Thomas Church Brownell in 1822. A new edifice was built in 1845 and the original building was sold and probably used as a hay barn. The second church burned in 1938. Ground was broken for a new church on October 1, 1939 and the building was dedicated on November 10, 1940. The new building, at the same location as its predecessor (1382 Middletown Avenue) was designed by Alfred W. Boylen of New Haven to resemble the 1845 church, with a simple Gothic interior. The present rectory was built in 1957 and the parish house in 1965.
The first house of worship to be constructed in the Mansfield Depot section of Mansfield was a small meeting room built in the late nineteenth century by the Union Chapel Society. In 1907 the Second Baptist Church of Mansfield was established. As described in the Hartford Courant on December 18, 1908:
At last the hopes of the small settlement of Baptists at Mansfield Depot are to be realized. Rev. Leonard Smith of Mansfield, pastor of the Spring Hill Baptist Church acting as trustee of the Eber Dunham fund, has bought the chapel and land at Mansfield Depot of the Union Chapel Society. The chapel will be remodeled and converted into a meeting house to be known as the Eber Dunham Memorial Church. The purchase has been made possible by a fund left by the late Eber Dunham, who was a religious man living at Mansfield Depot several miles from any church from the pulpit of which were expounded the doctrines that conformed with his religious belief. All during his life he had to drive to church and was regular in attendance, both winter and summer. When he died he made provision whereby a certain number of citizens of his religious belief could band themselves together and form a church and society and this fund could be secured for a meeting house. If not after a certain period the money would be turned over to the state Baptist society. Several times during the past few years has it looked as though the state society would get the fund, but a short time ago the number of Baptists at Mansfield Depot became sufficient to organize a society of their own and now will be effected the complete realization of their cherished hopes in having a place of worship of their own.
At the end of 1908 (as reported by the Courant on January 1, 1909), Rev. Smith called for bids to build an addition to the Union Chapel. The addition would become the main part of the new Eber Dunham Memorial Church, with the older section being used as a conference room. The church would also have a belfrey. Work on the church was scheduled to begin that spring.
In 1973 the church, located at 105 Depot Road, became the Mansfield Christian Fellowship.
Adjacent to the Congregational Church in Andover is the Congregational Chapel. According to the nomination for the Andover Center Historic District, it was built c. 1860, but the Town of Andover’s website calls it the Conference House and explains that it was built not long after the neighboring church, which was erected in 1833. The Conference House was constructed with timbers and other materials salvaged from the church’s first meeting house, built c. 1748. A versatile building, it was used for public meetings, elections and the local court until the Town Hall was built in 1893; as the town’s library from 1882 to 1927; as a town schoolhouse from 1888 to 1903; and as a meeting place for The Grange and other local organizations.
The Ecclesiastical Society for the North section of Stonington first met in 1721. The Society soon built a meeting house at “Meeting House Corner,” at the intersection of Wyassup and Reutemann Roads. The building, which became known as “the old black meeting house” because of the weathered condition of its unpainted wood, was taken down in 1817 and its wood was used to build a new meeting house at what is now 89 Main Street in North Stonington. Earlier, in 1746, the congregation had been divided. Influenced by the preaching of James Davenport of Long Island, a “New Light” preacher, many left the church to join a new Separate Church, called the Strict Congregational Church. They built their own meeting house over a mile west of North Stonington (Milltown) village. By 1817 the two churches had grown closer and both needed a new meeting house. They shared the newly erected building, officially reuniting as one church in 1827. The current meeting house was built in 1848 on the site of the 1817 edifice. In 1886, funds donated by Dudley R. Wheeler provided the church with stained glass windows and cherry wood pews, pulpit and wainscoting. The church was rededicated in April, 1887.
Episcopalian families in Washington (then called Judea and part of the town of Washington) built their first church in 1794. Dedicated to St. John, the building was moved in 1815 from Davies Hollow to the Green Hill area, which had developed as the town center. Construction of the current stone church (78 Green Hill Road) began in 1917 and the first service was held on Easter, 1918. The church was designed by architect Ehrick K. Rossiter, who is famed for the many houses he designed in the Washington area.
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