Originally published in the Winter 1983 Framingham Historical & Natural History Society Newsletter by Steve Herring
The chart above is presented as an overview of the development of the Framingham Church from the erection of the First Meeting House in 1698 to the two 20th century buildings now standing at the north end of the Centre common.
Hopefully, this chart will help explain why two churches of different denominations claim to be the original church, established in 1701, as seen on their sign boards.
No pictures or drawings exist to tell us what the first and second meeting houses looked like. But we know that certain styles existed and were followed throughout New England in colonial times. Therefore, using what narrative description of these two buildings which we have, the chart shows conjectural renderings. The drawing of the first meeting house is based on the West Springfield meeting house built only four years after the Framingham meeting house.
We know that the second meeting house had three stories, a popular style after 1710. The chart shows the Bridgewater meeting house, built four years before the second Framingham meeting house.
With the exception of the first meeting house, all the buildings were or are located in the general area to the north and east of the Centre Common. The first meeting house was located in the Old Burying Ground cemetery on Main Street, about one-half mile to the southeast.
In 1830 the church was split into two groups over a doctrinal disagreement. This was a time of religious pluralism, concurrent with the official separation of church and state, and the exercise of religious freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution. In Framingham, the Baptists and Methodists had already established their own churches by this time. The split of the original church into “Unitarian” and “Trinitarian” groups was being repeated in many New England towns.
The Unitarians retained the church edifice while the Trinitarians retained the minister, Rev. David Kellogg, and moved across the street. The Unitarians have become a Unitarian-Universalist denomination, calling their church, THE FIRST PARISH IN FRAMINGHAM. The Trinitarians became a Congregational denomination, and more recently the United Church of Christ. They called their church the Hollis Evangelical Society, changed in 1899 to THE PLYMOUTH CHURCH.