Baptist - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

First Baptist Church of Branford (1840)

The First Baptist Church of Branford is located on the Town Green at 975 Main Street. As described in Volume 1 of Everett G. Hill’s A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918):

Some embers of a former strife blazed up again when in 1838 some Baptists from Wallingford proposed to establish a church of that faith in Branford. There was opposition as soon as they sought a site for a building. For a time they worshipped in private houses. Their first public baptism was held in the river near Neck Bridge in 1838, and naturally attracted a crowd. Finally the town fathers kindly consented to let the new brethren build on the site of the old whipping post on the green, and there they did in 1840. The building was improved in 1866, and still serves the people.

Third Baptist Church, Stonington (1833)

The village of North Stonington in the Town of North Stonington was developed in the nineteenth century as a mill village and was called Milltown. Inspired by the evangelism Jabez S. Swan, first pastor of the Huntington Street Baptist Church in New London, a group of Milltown residents gathered at the home of Samuel Chapman to form a Baptist church on December 25, 1828. It was the Third Baptist Church in North Stonington, following the First Baptist Church (formed in 1743) and the Second Baptist Church (formed in 1765). The Third Baptist Church initially held its services in private homes and in the District #2 Schoolhouse. Its membership grew and a church, called the Milltown Baptist Meeting House, was built in 1833 at what is now 29 Main Street on land donated by Mrs. Stephen Avery, widow of Stephen Avery. North Stonington’s Fourth Baptist Church, also known as the Laurel Glen Chapel, was dismantled in 1940 and attached to the rear of the Third Baptist Church.

Second Baptist Church, Suffield (1840)

The Second Baptist Church of Suffield was established in 1805 by members of the First Baptist Church. The original wooden church was replaced by a brick Greek Revival edifice in 1840, located at 100 North Main Street. The church was designed by local architect Henry Sykes, who had trained under Chauncey Shepherd of Springfield and Ithiel Town of New Haven. Additions were made to the church in 1953 and 1959.

Flanders Baptist and Community Church (1843)

The Baptist Church in Lyme was established in 1752 and the first meeting house was built in 1754 on Meetinghouse Hill. By the later eighteenth century, membership in the church had grown to point that Baptists outnumbered Congregationalists in the parish. Repairs were made to the meeting house in 1788 and in 1804 the building was plastered for the first time. Originally known as the Lyme Baptist Church, the name was changed around 1810 to the “First Baptist Church of Lyme” after a second Baptist Church was formed in town. In 1839, when the area containing the church became part of the new town of East Lyme, the church became the First Baptist Church of East Lyme. A separate Baptist church in Niantic (part of East Lyme) was formed in 1842. By that time, demographic changes had resulted in the meeting house no longer being as centrally located as it had once been. With new churches established in Niantic and Old Lyme, the First Baptist Church moved to the village of Flanders in East Lyme, completing enough of the new meeting house to make the transfer from Meetinghouse Hill to Flanders in the spring of 1843. The old meeting house was taken down and sold for lumber to help pay for construction of the new building. A parsonage was built next door in 1879. The church has been known as the Flanders Baptist and Community Church since 1929.

Former Baptist Church, Cromwell (1853)

Former Baptist Church/American Legion Hall

The building at 349 Main Street in Cromwell was built in 1853 as a Baptist church and later served as an American Legion Hall. The church was organized in 1802. According to Rev. Myron Samuel Dudley’s History of Cromwell (1880):

In 1803 the church built a plain frame edifice Meeting-House on the West Green, and held their public meetings there until 1833, when the house was moved to the central part of the village and placed on a lot nearly opposite the present site of the Post Office. Worship continued in this house until Nov. 3, 1853, on which day a new house of worship, located a little North of the old one, built during the pastorate of the Rev. C. W. Potter and largely through his instrumentality, was dedicated. This latter edifice was remodeled, somewhat, internally in 1872, and is the house of worship of the church at the present time.

The church disbanded in 1936 and the building’s steeple was removed.

Seventh Day Baptist Church, Waterford (1860)

The Seventh Day Baptists organized their church in Waterford in 1784. As related in the History of New London (1860) by Frances Manwaring Caulkins:

The society of Sabbatarians, or seventh-day Baptists, of the Great Neck, Waterford, date their commencement from the year 1674. They remained for the space of a century, members of the Westerly and Hopkinton church, with which they first united, but were constituted a distinct church, Nov. 2d, 1784.

Rev. William L. Burdick, in his history of “The Eastern Association” that appeared in Vol. II of Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America (1910), quotes from an article by Prof. Wm. A. Rogers that appeared in the Seventh-day Baptist Quarterly:

The Church has had three places of worship. The first was built in 1710, and was situated on the brow of the hill on the east side of the Neck. and. seems to have been owned jointly with the First-day Baptist Church. The second meeting-house built by the Church was situated just north of the present one, and on the opposite side of the road. It was built in 1816; and it cost $859 more than the amount previously raised by subscription. The pews were sold Dec. 24. 1816, to meet this indebtedness. The present house of worship was built in 1860, upon the present location, and upon land donated by Dea. David Rogers. It cost $1,989.

The present address of the church is 206 Great Neck Road in Waterford.

First Baptist Church of Plymouth (1915)

St. Peter’s Episcopal parish in Plymouth was established in 1740. The parish’s first church edifice was built on the northeast corner of Plymouth Green in 1796. The church burned down in 1915, but was quickly rebuilt with a new design constructed of fieldstone. The stones were gathered by parishioners from their own fields and walls. In 1996, St. Peter’s merged with Trinity Parish in Thomaston to form St. Peter’s-Trinity Church. The former St. Peter’s Church in Plymouth then became the First Baptist Church of Plymouth. This congregation, which began its ministry in Waterbury in 1803, held its first worship service in Plymouth on the Sunday following Easter in 1997.