First Parish Church in Plymouth
Encyclopedia
Burial Hill
Burial Hill is a hill containing a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The burial ground is the burial site of several Pilgrims. The cemetery was founded in the 17th century and is located off Leyden Street, the first street in Plymouth.-History:The first Pilgrim burial ground was on...
on the town square
Town square
A town square is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, and town green.Most town squares are hardscapes suitable for open markets,...
off Leyden Street
Leyden Street
Leyden Street , is a street in Plymouth, Massachusetts that was created in 1620 by the Pilgrims, and claims to be the oldest continuously used street in the thirteen colonies of British North...
in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, it is the oldest church congregation in the United States in continuous operation.
Congregation
The congregation was founded in the English community of ScroobyScrooby
Scrooby is a small village, on the River Ryton and near Bawtry, in the northern part of the English county of Nottinghamshire. At the time of the 2001 census it had a population of 329. Until 1766, it was on the Great North Road so became a stopping-off point for numerous important figures...
in 1606 by the Pilgrims, a group of Protestant Christians. After they emigrated to North America in 1620, the Separatist congregation established a church in Plymouth which became a parish church of Massachusetts' Congregationalist state church
State church
State churches are organizational bodies within a Christian denomination which are given official status or operated by a state.State churches are not necessarily national churches in the ethnic sense of the term, but the two concepts may overlap in the case of a nation state where the state...
. Eventually, a schism developed at the turn of the 19th century, when much of the congregation adopted Unitarianism
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
along with many of the other state churches in Massachusetts. All state churches were disaffiliated with the government by 1834.
The congregation is affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association
Unitarian Universalist Association
Unitarian Universalist Association , in full the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in North America, is a liberal religious association of Unitarian Universalist congregations formed by the consolidation in 1961 of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of...
and has 80 members as of 2011.
Buildings
Originally, the congregation held ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
services on the Mayflower
Mayflower
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...
and then at a fort on Burial Hill
Burial Hill
Burial Hill is a hill containing a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The burial ground is the burial site of several Pilgrims. The cemetery was founded in the 17th century and is located off Leyden Street, the first street in Plymouth.-History:The first Pilgrim burial ground was on...
from 1621 until 1648. The fort was also used for other colony events including meetings of the Plymouth General Court
Plymouth General Court
The Plymouth General Court was the original colonial legislature of the Plymouth colony from 1620 to 1692...
. In 1648 the first of four church buildings on the town square was constructed. Later churches were built in 1684, 1744, and 1831. In 1899 the current granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
building was constructed in a Romanesque style
Romanesque Revival architecture
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
replacing the 1831 wooden Gothic
Carpenter Gothic
Carpenter Gothic, also sometimes called Carpenter's Gothic, and Rural Gothic, is a North American architectural style-designation for an application of Gothic Revival architectural detailing and picturesque massing applied to wooden structures built by house-carpenters...
structure.
See also
- First Parish Church (Duxbury, Massachusetts)
- Oldest churches in the United StatesOldest churches in the United StatesThe designation of the oldest church in the United States requires careful use of definitions, and must be divided into two parts, the oldest in the sense of oldest surviving building, and the oldest in the sense of oldest Christian church congregation...