Asylum Hill Congregational Church formally organized

During the fiftieth anniversary service on March 23, 1915, Atwood Collins gave an address called “The Beginnings of the Church,” and he gave the number of original members as 114.  Immediately following Collins’s address, Waldo Pratt gave an address called “The Subsequent History.”  Pratt said there were 113 original members. 

The chapel had been dedicated on March 12, 1865.

Construction at the church was underway on April 3, 1865.

1. Atwood Collins: “’On the 23d of March, 1865, the church was organized in the ancient new England method by formally accepting a creed and covenant which had been previously prepared.’”
2. Melva Swartz: “just two and a half weeks after General Lee’s surrender, the Asylum Hill Congregational Church was organized in the ancient New England method by formally accepting a creed and a covenant.”

The Asylum Hill Congregational Church was the seventh Congregational church in Hartford.  The previous six were Center (First - 1636), South (1670), African American Religious Society (Talcott Street – 1820), North (Park - 1824), Fourth (1850), and Pearl Street (1852) – I think.  Don’t quote me on this, yet, because by my reckoning the Fourth is the fifth.

Swartz, Melva J., “Hill Church Will Observe Anniversary,” Hartford Courant, March 18, 1940, page 1.

Unattributed, “Fiftieth Anniversary of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church,” Hartford Courant, February 14, 1915, page X5

Unattributed, “History of the Hill Church – F. Irvin Davis Gives It in Brief,” Hartford Courant, March 2, 1908, page 4.

Unattributed, “Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Twichell Honored at Anniversary of His Church,” Hartford Courant, March 24, 1915, page 16.