FROM THE HISTORIAN’S DESK, July/August 2025 – Carol Ganz.
When the residents of northern Groton began to agitate for a society of their own in 1724, so quickly after the formation of their town, Groton, and its church, they were probably aware of similar moves throughout the region. Eastern Connecticut in particular was constantly producing new government-approved churches (which generally led to Congregational churches) during the first half of the 1700s.
While there had been several such churches founded as early as the mid-1600s, they were usually along navigable waters, like the coastline or sizeable rivers (think Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, New Haven, Old Saybrook, Guilford, Norwich and New London). As settlers moved farther inland, and small communities grew large enough to support a local church, the ecclesiastical landscape was rapidly changing early in the next century.
I remembered that my childhood church, a little north of Norwich in Scotland, Connecticut, was founded around the same time as ours, so I looked up the details. The story was remarkably similar, even though they were not near a river the size of the Thames. The town of Windham was set off in 1692 and immediately hired a pastor, Samuel Whiting, although the church there was not considered officially organized until 1700, when Rev. Whiting was finally ordained. Already settlers were arriving in the eastern portion of the new town and by 1731, they appealed to the General Assembly for separate society privileges. Windham was no happier to lose part of their tax base than Groton had been six years earlier, and they objected, but permission for Scotland Society was granted at the May 1732 assembly. They met at first at a private home, that of Nathaniel Huntington (with toddler Samuel, future signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of Connecticut, and first “President of the United States of America in Congress Assembled,” probably running around underfoot). A site in approximately the center of the society was chosen for a meetinghouse, on a lot provided by Mr. Huntington, and several potential ministers later, a permanent pastor was secured in 1735, Rev. Ebenezer Devotion, Jr., recently graduated from Yale, who stayed for the remainder of his life. Doesn’t the pattern sound familiar?
It turns out many churches in this part of the state began between about 1710 and 1745, just one generation. I did a rough count from the sketches in “Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut,” published in 1861, and found about twenty-three new churches just in that period (1710-45) in southeastern Connecticut – some as new societies branching off as we did, some established along with new towns. There are many more nearby. We were in good company!
If you would like to browse some articles about early Connecticut Congregationalism, written from the perspective of the time, see the two-volume set in the history section of our Holdridge Library. Volume 1 was published in 1861 by the “General Association,” and the second volume in 1967 by what had become the UCC Connecticut Conference.