Plymouth Congregational Church (1838)

Plymouth Congregational Church

The Ecclesiastical Society of the section of Waterbury called Northbury (now Plymouth) was organized in 1739. The Society originally met in a building on the parish’s west side (now Thomaston). When plans were soon made to construct a meeting house on the east side, a number of west side settlers broke from the Congregational Society to form an Episcopal Society. (Plymouth was incorporated as a town in 1795 and Thomaston in 1875). As related in Francis Atwater’s History of the town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895):

The Congregational society had its first home on the hill, and there it has always been, nor would an Episcopal society have been formed in Thomaston then if the church had been built here. The conflict was primarily of locality and only secondarily of ecclesiastical order.

The first meeting house (built c. 1747) was replaced by a second, built in 1792. The current Plymouth Congregational Church, which faces Plymouth Green, was built in 1838. It has wooden clockworks built by Eli Terry and donated by him to the church. (more…)

Stoughton Building (1840)

Stoughton Building

Facing Plymouth Green and adjacent to the Plymouth Congregational Church is the Stoughton Building. I don’t know what its original purpose was, but it was built circa 1840 and once stood on the east side of North Street, about where St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (now the First Baptist Church) was later built. It is said that the building was moved to its current location in the 1890s under cover of darkness to avoid trouble with those who had opposed moving it. The Stoughton building’s bell tower, gable fanlight, and south wing are later additions. The building is used as an annex to the Plymouth Congregational Church.