Windsorville United Methodist Church (1877)

 

 

According to Vol. 2 of The Memorial History of Hartford County (1886):

The Rev. William H. Turkington, who occupied the pulpit of the Methodist Church at Windsorville [now Windsorville United Methodist Church] in 1882, has kindly furnished the following brief record of its history : —

“The following sketch concerning the church in this place is taken from the minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Conference. The church was built in 1829 [at Thrall and Clark roads, moved to Windsorville Road in 1858]; the name of East Windsor first appears in 1829 ; the name of Ketch Mills in 1839; the name of Windsorville, in 1850. In 1876 the church was destroyed by fire. In 1878 [1877, according to the Souvenir History of the New England Southern Conference (1897)] the present church edifice was dedicated.”

A complete list of the men who in rotation have filled the pulpit of this church since its foundation in 1829 includes more than forty names. The present pastor [1886] is the Rev. H. M. Cole.

South United Methodist Church, Manchester (1925)

The Methodist Church in Manchester began with a sermon preached in the spring of 1790 by the Rev. George Roberts in the home of Thomas Spencer. Rev. Roberts was an assistant of the Rev. Jesse Lee, who had preached the first Methodist sermon in Connecticut in Norwalk on June 7th, 1789. A Methodist Society in Manchester was soon organized and the first church building was constructed in 1794. In 1822, a new building was built at the corner of Center and Main Streets, now the site of a Masonic Temple. In 1851, the expanding congregation decided to divide into two congregations. The North Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1851 on North Main Street and, after receiving a hundred new members, a new South Church was built in 1854 at the corner of Main Street and Hartford Road. This church was enlarged in 1891 and replaced by the current church in 1925. It was designed in a Tudor Gothic style by architect Arthur Eaton Hill of Providence, Rhode Island, who died before it was completed. In 1958, the church acquired the estate of Frank Cheney, Jr., located across Hartford Road.

Durham Grange Hall (1836)

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The Methodist Episcopal Church in Durham was organized in 1815, with the South District School House being used for worship. Membership soon dwindled after conflicts within the church, but in 1830, according to William Chauncey Fowler’s History of Durham (1866):

Dr. Chauncey Andrews being in the practice of medicine in the town, secured a place for holding Methodist meetings, and at his own expense fitted up a room in the Academy on the Green and hired a Local Preacher from Middletown by the name of Isham, to preach six Sabbaths, incurring the responsibility of paying him without any orders from the Society or Class. From that time forward Methodist meetings were held regularly on the Sabbath, and the students and Professors from the Wesleyan University at Middletown, supplied the pulpit.

Membership now increased quickly until a Methodist church building was constructed on Main Street in 1836. Durham Methodists joined with Congregationalists in 1941 to form the United Churches of Durham, using the North Congregational Church building for their united worship. The old Greek Revival-style Methodist church then became a Grange Hall and is now used as office space (see also: pdf).

Trinity United Methodist Church, New Britain (1891)

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The earliest Methodist church in New Britain was built at the corner of Main and Walnut Streets in 1828, replaced by a larger building in 1854. This was in turn replaced by a new Trinity United Methodist Church, located on the east side of Main Street (and Chestnut Street). The new granite Richardsonian Romanesque church, designed by Amos P. Cutting of Worcester, was built in 1889-1891. By 2000, the congregation could not afford the costly repairs the building required and voted to demolish the church. Local citizens formed a committee to save the church, which has now become Trinity-on-Main, a non-profit art center, education facility, community space and venue for events.

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1874)

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The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church traces its origin to 1833, when the first African American church in Hartford split into two congregations. One was Talcott Street (now Faith) Congregational Church and the other later became Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion, which is Hartford’s oldest black Methodist congregation. With earlier church buildings having been located on Elm street and later on Pearl street, the congregation moved to the current church, on Main Street in Hartford’s North End, in the late 1920s. This High Victorian Gothic church was built in 1874 as North Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1926 it was bought by Emmanuel Synagogue, the interim owners until the building became the Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church.

First & Summerfield United Methodist Church (1849)

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Designed by Henry Austin, the First Methodist Church, on College Street in New Haven, was built in 1849 in the late Federal style in a stylistic link with the nearby Center Church of 1814. In the ensuing years, the church was significantly altered, with many of the Federal features being removed. In 1904, after a fire, the church was repaired with a new portico and steeple, in a Federal Revival mode, designed by Charles C. Haight of New York, who also designed the Keney Memorial Clock Tower in Hartford. In 1981, First Methodist Church merged with Summerfield United Methodist Church, located in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven, to form the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church.