St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, New Canaan (1833)

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in New Canaan was originally built as St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The Anglican church in New Canaan originally met in a building on West Road, deeded to “professors of the Church of England” by a wealthy landowner in 1764. This was replaced by a new Episcopal church, built in 1833-1834 on God’s Acre in the center of New Canaan. The church (it was initially painted brown, but later painted white), continued as an Episcopal church until the current St. Mark’s was built in 1959-1961 on Oenoke Ridge. In 1962, the old church was acquired by the Board of American Missions of the Augustana Lutheran Church for a new Lutheran mission congregation, organized the following year as St. Michael’s Lutheran Church. That same year, St. Michael’s gave the adjacent Ludlow House, which had been included with the church property, to the New Canaan Historical Society in exchange for nearly an acre of land to be used for additional parking.

Church of the Epiphany, Southbury (1867)

An Episcopal Church in Southbury was established in 1843 at a meeting in the Bullet Hill School. Organized as the Church of the Resurrection, it was renamed the Church of the Epiphany in 1858. According to the History of New Haven County, Connecticut, Vol. II (1892), edited by J. L. Rockey, “The corner stone of the church, on the Shadrach Osborn lot, was laid November 5th, 1863, and the church was consecrated by Bishop Williams September 19th, 1867.” The main part of the building is stone, but the belfry is made of wood.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wallingford (1868)

Anglicans in Wallingford are thought to have first formally organized themselves in 1729, later establishing a Union Church with residents of North Haven in 1741. They erected a Church building near Pond Hill which was soon outgrown, as was a later building the parishioners moved to in the 1750s. A new church was built at the corner of North Main and Christian Streets in 1758-1762. At that time, with parishioners from other towns having established their own separate churches, the former Union Church was renamed St. Paul’s. In 1831, St. Paul’s acquired the land and meetinghouse of the Wells Society, a group of Congregationalists who joined with the Episcopalians. The old Episcopal church building of 1762 was moved, eventually being used as a residence. In 1846, a new Gothic-style church was built on the Wells land, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1867. It was replaced the following year by the current brownstone church, designed by George E. Harney of New York. It was built in the Gothic tradition of the English Ecclesiologists, who modeled their designs on English medieval parish churches.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, East Windsor (1809)

St. John’s Episcopal Church (pdf) was built in 1809 at Warehouse Point, a section of East Windsor which was undergoing economic development at the time. Some of the founders of the church included former members of the First Congregational Church of East Windsor, who had wanted a new church built and been tried and acquitted of the charge of arson after a fire had destroyed their meeting house. St. John’s was constructed on the Green at Warehouse Point, the work being supervised by builder-architect Samuel Belcher. The church was moved to its current location, at 96 Main Street, in 1844. Ten years later, Henry Austin of New Haven was hired to remodel the church in the Gothic style, work which was completed in 1855. While the exterior retains an early nineteenth-century appearance, it sharply contrasts with Austin’s later English Gothic interior.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Shelton (1818)

Connecticut’s first Anglican parish was established in Stratford in 1707. Daniel Shelton, an Anglican who had settled in Stratford and later in Repton (later called Ripton and now Huntington, which was later incorporated into the city of Shelton) and been one those who had earlier petitioned for the Stratford parish, petitioned in 1722 for another parish to be established in Repton. Clergy from Stratford began making the trip to Repton to conduct Anglican services in private homes until the Repton parish was founded in 1740. A church building was soon constructed and survived until 1811. In that year, Sidney DeForest, seeking to rid the church’s belfry of pigeons by shooting them, ended up setting the church on fire with tow wadding from his musket. DeForest settled the claims for damages by giving some of his property as payment. The current St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was then built on the site of the earlier church. It was begun in 1812 and completed in 1818 and continued to stand next to what is now called Huntington Center Green. In 1870, a number of changes were made, in the Gothic style, to the interior of the church.

Grace Episcopal Church, Old Saybrook (1872)

For Easter, we’re featuring here an English Gothic-style church in Old Saybrook. Regular Episcopal services began to be held in Old Saybrook in 1825, meeting in the Center Schoolhouse. The first Grace Episcopal Church was constructed in 1830-1831, later replaced by the current church building, built in 1871-1872. The second church used the cornerstone of the first church, which was subsequently moved around the corner to the Old Boston Post Road.