Easthampton is a city in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The city is on the southeastern edge of the Pioneer Valley near the five colleges in the college towns of Northampton and Amherst. The population was 16,211 at the 2020 census.
Solomon Stoddard was the pastor of the Congregationalist Church in Northampton, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He succeeded Rev. Eleazer Mather, and later married his widow around 1670. Stoddard significantly liberalized church policy while promoting more power for the clergy, decrying drinking and extravagance, and urging the preaching of hellfire and the Judgment. The major religious leader of what was then the frontier, he was known as the "Puritan Pope of the Connecticut River valley" and was concerned with the lives of second-generation Puritans. The well-known theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was his grandson, the son of Solomon's daughter, Esther Stoddard Edwards. Stoddard was the first librarian at Harvard University and the first person in American history known by that title.
The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist traditions, and with approximately 4,852 churches and 802,356 members. The United Church of Christ is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Pilgrims and Puritans. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Calvinist group in the country, the German Reformed. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Lutheran, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the U.S. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 0.4 percent, or 1 million adult adherents, of the U.S. population self-identify with the United Church of Christ.
East Freetown is one of two villages in the town of Freetown, Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. Added to the town in 1747, East Freetown was originally an outpost settlement of Tiverton, Rhode Island, then a part of Massachusetts. It rests on the shore of Long Pond.
The Old South Meeting House is a historic Congregational church building located at the corner of Milk and Washington Streets in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, built in 1729. It gained fame as the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. Five thousand or more colonists gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the time.
The National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (NACCC) is an association of about 400 churches providing fellowship for and services to churches from the Congregational tradition. The Association maintains its national office in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. The body was founded in 1955 by former clergy and laypeople of the Congregational Christian Churches in response to that denomination's pending merger with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ in 1957.
The First Coconut Grove Schoolhouse is a historic school located within City of Miami limits, in Dade County, Florida. The school originally resided at 2916 Grand Avenue, Miami, Florida, 33133. The structure was built in 1887, by Coconut Grove pioneer, Charles Peacock. Peacock reportedly constructed the house using wood gathered from ships wrecked in nearby Key Biscayne. The building originally served as a community gathering place, with Sunday School as its main purpose.
The Congregational Library & Archives is an independent special collections library and archives. It is located on the second floor of the Congregational House at 14 Beacon Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The Library was founded in 1853 by a gathering of Congregational ministers and has since evolved into a professional library and archives that holds more than 250,000 items, predominantly focused on 18th to 21st century American Congregational history. The Library's reading room is free and open to the public for research but the Library's stacks are closed and book borrowing privileges are extended exclusively to members.
Connecticut is known as "The Constitution State". The origin of this title is uncertain, but the nickname is assumed to be a reference to the Fundamental Orders of 1638–39 which represent the framework for the first formal government written by a representative body in Connecticut. Connecticut's government has operated under the direction of five separate documents in its history. The Connecticut Colony at Hartford was governed by the Fundamental Orders, and the Quinnipiac Colony at New Haven had its own Constitution in The Fundamental Agreement of the New Haven Colony which was signed on June 4, 1639.
Atwater Congregational Church is a registered historic building in Atwater, Ohio, United States, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since February 23, 1973. It was built in 1841 and incorporates elements of both the Federal and Greek Revival styles and stands over 100 feet (30 m) tall. The church has had a continuous congregation that was founded in 1818 and continues to meet today as a non-denominational church. The building has undergone several renovations and repairs through the years.
The First Congregational Church of Zumbrota is an historic congregational church in Zumbrota, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1862 in the form of a colonial meeting house. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for being one of Southeast Minnesota's oldest standing churches and a reflection of New Englander settlement in many of its towns.
First Parish Church in Plymouth is a historic Unitarian Universalist church at the base of Burial Hill on the town square off Leyden Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The congregation was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims in Plymouth. The current building was constructed in 1899.
The Circular Congregational Church is a historic church at 150 Meeting Street in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, used by a congregation established in 1681. Its parish house, the Parish House of the Circular Congregational Church, is a highly significant Greek Revival architectural work by Robert Mills, and is recognized as a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
The First Congregational Church of Manistee, Michigan is a church located at 412 South 4th Street in Manistee, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
In the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans colonized North America, mainly in New England. Puritans were generally members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy under Elizabeth I of England, James I of England, and Charles I of England. Most Puritans were "non-separating Puritans" who did not advocate setting up separate congregations distinct from the Church of England; these were later called Nonconformists. A small minority of Puritans were "separating Puritans" who advocated setting up congregations outside the Church. The Pilgrims were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Non-separating Puritans played leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691.
First Congregational United Church of Christ is a historic church at 700 Poyntz Avenue in Manhattan, Kansas.
The building formerly known as Godalming Congregational Church was the Congregational chapel serving the ancient town of Godalming, in the English county of Surrey, between 1868 and 1977. It superseded an earlier chapel, which became Godalming's Salvation Army hall, and served a congregation which could trace its origins to the early 18th century. The "imposing suite of buildings", on a major corner site next to the Town Bridge over the River Wey, included a schoolroom and a manse, and the chapel had a landmark spire until just before its closure in 1977. At that time the congregation transferred to the nearby Methodist chapel, which became a joint Methodist and United Reformed church with the name Godalming United Church. The former chapel then became an auction gallery before being converted into a restaurant; then in 2018 the premises were let to the Cotswold Company to be converted into a furniture and home accessories showroom. In 1991 the former chapel was listed at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
The Congregational Church in Exeter was gathered in 1638 by the Rev. John Wheelwright following his expulsion from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The current congregation is a merger of the former First Parish and Second Parish of Exeter. Second Parish split from First Parish in the 1700s during the Great Awakening over theological differences. The two congregations then reunited in 1920.
Congregationalism in the United States consists of Protestant churches in the Reformed tradition that have a congregational form of church government and trace their origins mainly to Puritan settlers of colonial New England. Congregational churches in other parts of the world are often related to these in the United States due to American missionary activities.
