Browse the First Congregational Church relations in Hopkinton, New Hampshire

The First Congregational Church of Hopkinton, New Hampshire was organized in 1757. Rev. James Scales was called as the first minister and ordained in November 1757 at the garrison on Putney’s Hill, as a meetinghouse had not yet been built. The garrison served as the meetinghouse until 1766, when the first church building was constructed. That meetinghouse was destroyed by fire in 1789 and a new, larger meetinghouse was built within four months. A steeple was added to the building in 1809, and a bell was purchased in 1811 from Revere & Son of Boston. The congregation had grown to eighty members in 1776, and by 1800, had 140 members. 

Rev. Scales was originally from Boxford, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard in 1733. He served as the minister in Hopkinton until 1770. The second minister to serve Hopkinton was Rev. Elijah Fletcher, who graduated from Harvard in 1769 and was ordained in 1773. Fletcher died in 1786 at age 39. One of his children, Grace Fletcher, was a teacher who married the lawyer (and later US Senator) Daniel Webster in 1808. The church’s third minister was Rev. Jacob Cram, of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. A graduate of Dartmouth, he was ordained in 1789 and dismissed in 1792 because church members felt he had deceived them about his beliefs, which apparently did not match with those of the congregation. The church was without a minister for several years after that, until Rev. Ethan Smith was called in 1800. Rev. Smith was a Dartmouth graduate who had served as the minister in Haverhill, New Hampshire before coming to Hopkinton. After leaving Hopkinton in 1817, he ministered at churches in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Rev. Roger C. Hatch, a graduate of Yale, was called to Hopkinton in 1818, and served as minister until 1832. 

The Congregational Society in Hopkinton was incorporated in 1818 by the state legislature, with a primary purpose of raising funds to supplement the taxes collected to support the church and its minister. This became even more necessary after New Hampshire disestablished the Congregational church the following year. In 1929, the church became the United Parish by joining with the Hopkinton Baptist Church. The church became a member of the United Church of Christ (UCC) in 1969. 

This collection contains one volume of church records kept by the Hopkinton Congregational Society and more than 300 individual relations of faith–testimonies of religious experiences required for membership in the congregation. The relations of faith in this collection are dated between 1792 and 1869, with the majority from the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the period when Ethan Smith and Roger C. Hatch served as the ministers in Hopkinton. Approximately two-thirds of the relations were given by women.

Materials in this collection have been digitized in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society and the New Hampshire Historical Society and have been made available through our New England's Hidden Histories project.