Sesquicentennial History, part 2

The Gathering of First Congregational Church, 1842-1845

The first decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a great movement of eastern settlers into the region of the Northwest Territory by new highways like the National Road, the Erie Canal which opened in 1825, and the newly-invented steamboat. Population growth in the area permitted the admission of Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), and Michigan (1837) to the Union. Wisconsin, more distant from eastern population centers, was settled last. Its population in 1820 was comprised of 651 civilians and 804 soldiers and their families. But Wisconsin grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s permitting Wisconsin's formal organization as a territory in 1836 when its population had reached 22,218.

Although the first settlements in this territory were at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, settlers began to arrive in numbers in the Milwaukee region by the 1830s. They found dense forests of oak, maple, hickory, and basswood extending inland from Lake Michigan for about a dozen miles. In the midst of this forest, in 1835, Charles Hart built the first log house of the settlement that was to become Wauwatosa. Like other early settlers, Hart bought his land for $1.25 per acre from the government. Because Hart went on to build a water-powered saw and grist mill on the nearby Memomonee River, the settlement that grew up around his cabin was at first called Hart's Mill, but was renamed Wauwatosa in 1841.

Many of the early settlers of the Wauwatosa area were New Englanders of Congregational background or New Englanders who had settled for a time in central New York State on their westward migration in an area known as the "Burned-Over District" because of its religious fervor. The spiritual needs of these settlers at first were served by circuit-riding pastors of various faiths, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Dutch Reformed, men who preached initially in private homes and then in the first schoolhouse, a 16 foot X 20 foot log building near the intersection of the present Mayfair Road and North Avenue. When a second school, near the present Wauwatosa Village was built, these occasional services were held there, too. Indeed, services very early took place in the second school as an account from the seventy-fifth anniversary history of First Congregational Church suggests:

When the building was in process of erection, one Saturday, a minister happened to come along. He was asked to preach the following day and the notice widely circulated, not by telephone. Mr. Joseph Warren, the carpenter, laid some loose boards on the women's side for a floor and fixed a comfortable plank for a seat. The legs of the work-bench were put down through the joists for a pulpit. The men sat on the other side without much ceremony. All went on very well until a wagon passed in the road, when a dog in the audience sprang to the sill (where there would afterward be a door) and barked, just as he would at home. Silas Brown fired a broom at the dog with such accurate aim that it hit him, and he ran around back of the house making more noise than before, but in a different tune. The action of firing the broom shook the tottering pieces of lumber on which a ladder was lying and also the men sitting on the ladder. Down it all came! Mr. Chas. Hart was asleep, with a large red silk handkerchief spread all over his head and face to escape the swarming flies, and it was amusing to see him try to get that handkerchief off to see where he was going. There was no floor at this place and they all went down into the green oats,for the school house was built upon a field of oats. This was the first meeting in the new school house, and we may imagine the "preaching was under difficulties."

Clearly the growing settlement at Wauwatosa required more regular religious life. Two Congregational ministers, the Reverend John J. Miter of Plymouth Church in Milwaukee and an itinerant preacher, the Reverend Hiram Marsh sent by the American Home Mission Society, facilitated the founding of First Congregational Church. Miter and Marsh, aided by Wauwatosan Richard Gilbert, began generating sentiment for the gathering of a church by visiting homes and preaching in the area in January 1842. The gathering of this congregation occurred in the home of Richard Gilbert near Wauwatosa's first log school. The first entry in the Church's record book reveals that this congregation was organized according to traditional, democratic Congregational principles and was influenced by the Plan of Union of 1801 with the Presbyterians. The record of the congregation's gathering also reflected the growing concern of Congregationlists in the 1840s for freedom for all:

Wauwatosa, March 15,1842

At a meeting of several persons formerly connected with other churches, held at the house of Richard Gilbert, in the town of Wauwatosa, for the purpose of organizing a church, Rev. John J. Miter was chosen moderator, and constituted the meeting with prayer. Rev. Hiram Marsh was appointed clerk and the following persons presented evidence of their good standing in and regular dismissal from their churches, viz.: Richard Gilbert, Nancy Gilbert, Sylvia Gilbert, Fanny E. Morgan, Emmerson C. Maynard, Maria M. Maynard, Hezekiah Gilbert, Jonathan M. Warren, and Lavinia D. Warren. It was then voted to organize themselves into a church to be called the First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa. The following confession of faith was then adopted: the printed confession and covenant of the Presbyterian Church of Knoxville, Illinois, with the following addition to the convenant: "You further convenant with each other not to use intoxicating liquors as a beverage, nor encourage the manufacture or sale of them in the community. Also that you will withhold fellowship from those who hold slaves and those who advocate the right of slave-holding." After completion of the organization of the church, it proceeded to the examination of David Morgan and Ephraim Gilbert with reference to their union with the church; their examination was sustained.

Signed: Hiram Marsh

Founded by these eleven members, who were soon joined in the first year of the Church's life by fifteen more, First Congregational Church's initial years were not easy. The new congregation lacked its own building for eleven years, and thus the Church met in local school buildings until 1853. More importantly the Church's pulpit had little stability in the first years. Three ministers held the pulpit in rapid succession in 1842-1845, Hiram Marsh, L. Bridgeman, and J. Kitchel. Indeed, Mr. Kitchel did not even live in Wauwatosa, but weekly walked out from Milwaukee to conduct services. The Church attained the clerical stability necessary to allow it to flourish only in 1845 with the arrival of the Reverend Luther Clapp.

Next Page: Growing Stablity 1845-1873

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