Project Canterbury

Sketches of Church Life in Colonial Connecticut
Being the Story of the Transplanting of the Church of England into Forty Two Parishes of Connecticut,
with the Assistance of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

Written by Members of the Parishes in Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Society

Edited by Lucy Cushing Jarvis

New Haven, Connecticut: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company, 1902.

Christ Church, Sharon
1754.

FROM the settlement of the town of Sharon in 1738-9 there had been resident here several families of the communion of the Church of England, but they were never sufficiently numerous to form a separate congregation or to maintain public worship until about the year 1755; in this year, on the 14th day of April, leave was given by the town to those of that communion "to erect a church at the corner of the highways that come from the upper end of the town and the Iron works Hollow." This was at the head of the present Green. The building was erected, and stood for nearly forty years. It is mentioned as a singular circumstance in regard to its construction that its external covering was a coat of mortar. Public worship was maintained in it for a number of years; the desk being supplied by missionaries sent out by the Honorable Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The first of the missionaries who labored here was the Rev. Ebenezer Dibblee, whose permanent home was at Stamford, but who had the care of many of the churches in the western part of the Colony. After Mr. Dibblee, the Rev. Solomon Palmer and the Rev. Thomas Davies had the charge of the churches of New Milford, Roxbury, New Preston, and New Fairfield. The leading churchmen in the town were Messrs. Joel Harvey, Job Gould, Elnathan Goodrich, John Pennoyer, Simeon Rowley, Samuel Hitchcock, Solomon Goodrich, and perhaps some others. At one time during his ministry Mr. Davies reported the number of families belonging to the parish to be twenty-two and the number of communicants to be nineteen. During the Revolutionary War the church building was deserted, turned into a barrack, and never again used as a place of worship. Mr. Richard Clark succeeded Mr. Davies in this mission and resided in New Milford until the close of the war.

Project Canterbury