History

Like most New England congregational churches, we owe our beginnings to religious dispute and economic growth. In 1761, tiring of the longstanding disagreements between those who yearned for a church fueled by enthusiastic piety and those who sought to maintain the government and church controlled social order, a group of fifty-six people from Plainfield, Connecticut decided to escape their overcrowded town and settle a new town north of Charlestown, New Hampshire on the Connecticut River.

As the new town grew and people settled near brooks and mills, it became apparent that the meeting house proposed at the town’s center was too distant for those who lived on the eastern side of town. On 8 October 1779, led by Benjamin Kimball, forty-one people covenanted together to form a religious society among the settlers west of Grantham Mountain. With the assistance of the Reverend Isaiah Potter of Lebanon, the Meriden Congregational Church was organized by fourteen members on 2 May 1780.

The current building, constructed of granite and decorated with beautiful stained glass windows, was completed in 1897 and is the third on the site, it houses an Estey pipe organ which has been cited by the Organ Historical Society.