Greenmanville Church (1851)

The Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport was built in 1851 during the area’s heyday as a shipbuilding center. As related in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. II (1910):

In 1838 three brothers, George, Clarke and Thomas S. Greenman, members of the First Hopkinton church, settled in Mystic, Conn., and commenced the ship-building business. Thirteen years later, 1849, they built a mill for the manufacture of woolen goods. About these industries sprang up a village called Greenmanville. The most of those working in the ship-yard were Sabbath-keepers, and being several miles removed from any Seventh-day Baptist church, it was deemed wise to organize one. This was done in August, 1850, with about forty members. The constituent members were mostly from the First Hopkinton church, a few from the Waterford church, and one from the Newport church. The largest membership, fifty-six, was reached the first year and it held pretty well up to this for thirty years. Its present (1902) number is eighteen.

Though it never enrolled a large number of members, yet it exercised a wide influence in denominational and other circles. George Greenman, a member of this church, was president of the Seventh-day Baptist Missionary Society for thirty-one years. The leading men of the church took an active part in the anti-slavery struggle, and the temperance cause has been supported by these godly men. Clarke Greenman, Thomas S. Greenman and Benjamin F. Langworthy served the town in the state legislature at different times.

The congregation was depleted with the decline of the shipyard in the 1870s and 1880s and the selling of the woolen mill to owners of another denomination. The church closed in 1904 and the building then served as a private residence and an apartment building before it was acquired by Mystic Seaport in 1955. The Seaport moved the church from its original site (near the current Visitor Center) to its present location. For a time, the church was called the Aloha Meetinghouse and was a nondenominational church. Mystic Seaport added the current tower clock, built in 1857 by the Howard Clock Company of Massachusetts. The clock is on loan from Yale, where it was once located in the Old South Sheffield Hall of the Sheffield Scientific School. (more…)

Old Mystic United Methodist Church (1851)

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Methodism gained adherents in what is now the village of Old Mystic in Stonington. Circuit preachers came at regular intervals and services were held in private homes and various other sites until a church was erected in 1849. Built at the foot of Quoketaug Hill, it was destroyed by a fire on February 17, 1851. A new church, located at what is now 44 Main Street in Old Mystic, was completed by the end of the year. The church had an 80-foot spire that was lost in the Hurricane of 1938. A parish house was erected behind the church in 1912. This was enlarged and attached to the church in 1961. (more…)

Nepaug Bible Church (1848)

The original Congregational Church in New Hartford stood in the Town Hill Section. Built in 1739-1749, it was replaced by a new church in 1829. Residents in the north and south sections of town wanted churches located closer to where they lived and eventually formed their own Congregational societies. The North Congregational Church was built in 1828. A South Congregational Society was formed in 1846 in Nepaug, which was then the center of town. The church edifice, called the Nepaug Congregational Church, was built in 1848. As described in the History of Litchfield County (1881):

Much dissatisfaction with the location of the new Town Hill church was felt by the members resident at South End, who naturally wished to have it placed midway between the two settlements, waiving all attachment for the old site. This discontent gradually increased until, in 1848, the South Congregational Church of New Hartford was organized and the present church edifice built at Nepaug.

The same book describes the church building as follows:

The church edifice is of wood, with a tower and bell. It has a basement containing a lecture-room, where town-meetings have been held on
alternate years. During the year 1880 about six hundred dollars were expended on the building, which is now in thorough repair.

Now called the Nepaug Bible Church, it is located at 780 Litchfield Turnpike (Route 202). The steeple was originally twice as high. (more…)

Bakerville United Methodist Church (1960)

The history of the Methodist church in New Hartford begins with the establishment of the New Hartford Society of the Reformed Methodist Church in 1845. A Methodist church building was erected on Maple Hollow Road in the village of Bakerville in the 1850s. It was destroyed by fire on September 23, 1954. Ground breaking for a new Bakerville Church, located at 1087 Litchfield Turnpike, took place in the fall of 1957. The exterior of the church was built first, followed by construction of the attached Fellowship Hall. It was in Fellowship Hall that the first church service was held on April 6, 1958. The church sanctuary was consecrated on December 11, 1960.

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Ivoryton (1905)

All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Ivoryton was founded in 1895 as St. Mary’s Church, which met in various places, including private homes, until a church was erected at 129 Main Street. Land for the church was given in 1904 to the Missionary Society of the Diocese of Connecticut by Isabell J. Doane, daughter of Marsena Whiting Comstock of Comstock, Cheney & Company. The cornerstone was laid in 1905 and the church was consecrated on January 7, 1906. A parish hall was added to the church in 1948 and the neighboring house was acquired as a vicarage in 1959. The house was built in 1886 by William Griffith and his wife Lillian, another daughter of Marsena Whiting Comstock.