During the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, Ebenezer Frothingham was a separatist minister. In 1753, he brought his congregation from Wethersfield, where he had been in and out of jail, to Middletown in pursuit of religious tolerance. After worshiping in his home on Mill Street, a meeting house was erected nearby. Known as the Strict Congregational Church and later as South Church, the congregation moved to a new building at the corner of Main and Pleasant Streets in 1830. A Discourse Preached in the South Congregational Church, Middletown, Ct., on the Sabbath Morning after the Assassination of President Lincoln was published in 1865. The current church was constructed on the same site, replacing the earlier structure, in 1867. The church was renovated in 1985 and 2008.
