Cornerstone laid at Trinity Episcopal Church

1. The event was well-attended.
2. When the event was announced in the Courant on October 20, 1860, Thomas Brownell and John Williams were scheduled to officiate, with assistance from the “clergy of this vicinity.”
3. Thomas Pynchon of Trinity College participated in the procession along with other faculty members and students.

An article published in the Courant for Trinity Episcopal Church’s centennial gives the date of this ceremony as October 2, 1860.  All of the contemporary reporting puts the date at October 23, as does an article published in 1910 for the church’s 50^th anniversary.

1. On September 8, 1860, the Courant reported that demolition of the Church of the Savior remained underway.
2. The cornerstone ceremony had originally been scheduled for October 21, 1860.

The women of Trinity parish will hold a fair on December 21, 1860 intended in part to raise funds for the purchase of furniture for the new church.

According to the Courant article about Trinity Parish’s jubilee celebration in May 1910, this ceremony was Thomas Brownell’s last official act as bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

1. “The corner stone of Trinity Church will be laid with appropriate ceremony at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.”
2. “The corner stone of Trinity Church, about to be erected on Sigourney Street, was laid with appropriate ceremony yesterday forenoon.”
3. “Asst. Bishop Williams made a few remarks befitting the occasion, and hoped the new church would stand to future ages, a birthplace of souls and a gate of heaven.”
4. “There was quite a concourse present at the ceremony.”

1. R. M. Abercrombie was the rector of Christ Church from 1856 to 1861.
2. Thomas Church Brownell was the bishop of Connecticut as well as the presiding bishop of the Episcopalian Church.
3. Hezekiah Huntington was president of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company.
4. Elisha Johnson was a judge who lived at 37 Garden Street at the time of his death in 1891.
5. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon was a professor at Trinity College who would serve Trinity College’s president from 1874 to 1883.
6. C. Talbot was the “bishop of the Northwest.” He had been consecrated in this role in February 1860 in Indianapolis, and he died as bishop of the diocese of Indiana in 1883.
7. John Williams was the bishop coadjutor of Connecticut in 1860. Brownell had ordained him, and he would succeed Brownell as bishop of Connecticut in 1865.  Also, Williams’s parents had been Unitarian; he joined the Episcopalian Church while a student at Harvard.

Unattributed.  “Laying the corner stone of Trinity Church,” Hartford Daily Courant, October 24, 1860, page 2.

Unattributed.  “This building was moved stone by stone,” Hartford Courant, November 22, 1859, page 4F.

Unattributed.  “Trinity Church,” Hartford Daily Courant, October 20, 1860, page 2.

Unattributed.  “Trinity Church fifty years old,” Hartford Courant, May 16, 1910, page 12.