The First Congregational Church in Guilford dates back to 1639, when Rev. Henry Whitfield and his followers sailed from England to New Haven and settled the town of Guilford, then part of New Haven Colony. They had drawn up a covenant on shipboard during their journey to America. The town’s first meeting house, a small stone building with a thatched roof, was soon built on Guilford Green, replaced in 1713 by a new church, said to have been the first in Connecticut to have a steeple clock and bell. In the early nineteenth century there was a movement to clear the Green of buildings. The current church was then built in 1830, on a site overlooking the Green. The Hurricane of 1938 toppled the original steeple, which was rebuilt the following year.
The steeple on this church is similar to one on the First Congregational Church in Vernon. Do you happen to know the name of that style of steeple, and was the design replicated on all Congregational Churches in New England?
Churches have a wide variety of steeple designs. The Guilford steeple actually has some significant differences from the one in Vernon. The Vernon church in use today was built in 1966, although following the design of the preceding church, which burnt down. It’s interesting to note, though, that (according to the Vernon church website) the steeple on the old Vernon church, like that of Guilford, also blew down in the 1938 hurricane and had to be replaced.