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The Episcopal Church

Formation

Waterbury began as a strictly Puritan, and later Congregational, community, but from the first settlement there were a few Episcopalians present. The first Episcopal baptism in Waterbury was performed in 1734 by Rev. Samuel Johnson, rector at Stratford. Ministers often traveled to towns without resident ministers in order to perform baptisms and sermons. In 1740, approximately 25 families left Waterbury’s Congregational Church to become Episcopalians. Three years later, the Episcopal church purchased land from the town of Waterbury on the corner of West Main and Willow Streets and established the church and parish of St. James. Waterbury did not, however, have its own minister until the 1750s; before that time, the minister from Derby would spend part of his time in Waterbury.


Slavery and the Church

Prominent members of the Episcopal church in Waterbury were slave owners; the first may have been Rev. James Scovill, a Waterbury native who served as the town’s first resident Episcopal minister from 1759 to 1788. At least two people, named Phillis and Dick, were enslaved by Rev. Scovill. Dick was eventually given his freedom, possibly when Scovill moved to Canada in 1788. At one point, Dick had also been enslaved by Waterbury’s Episcopal deacon, Stephen Bronson.


Preserved Porter and his family were also members of the Episcopal church. Porter’s wife, Lydia, was a devout Episcopalian. She may have been influential in having Fortune baptized in December of 1797. Fortune appears to have been the only member of his family to have been baptized. There were a handful of free and enslaved African Americans living in Westbury who were baptized in the Episcopal church beginning in the 1750s.


Waterbury's Episcopal Church, 1795
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Waterbury's Episcopal Church, 1795
St. John's church, designed by architect David Hoadley, was constructed on the Green in 1795, replacing St. James' church which had been located further away. St. John's church was consecrated on November 1, 1797. Engraving published in Joseph Anderson's History of Waterbury, Volume I, 1896.


St. John's Church, c. 1845
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St. John's Church, c. 1845
St. John's church on the Green, showing alterations made in 1839. Nineteenth-century print from a daguerreotype. Collection of the Mattatuck Museum.


 
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