Historical Catalogue of the First Church of Hartford, Connecticut, 1633-1885.

The First Church of Hartford was originally gathered in Newtown (now Cambridge), Massachusetts. The first pastor of the church was Thomas Hooker, who was appointed October 11, 1633. On May 31, 1636, the church removed to Hartford, arriving there sometime in the second week in June. This church originally represented the entire area now included in the city and township of Hartford and the townships of East Hartford and West Hartford. In 1659-60, a large group of members seceded from the church and removed to Hadley, Massachusetts, founding the church there. Subsequent eighteenth-century secessions resulted in the formation of the Second Church of Hartford, and the churches of East Hartford and West Hartford.

According to the introduction of the catalogue, published in 1885 by the church, "few New England churches of kindred distinction and antiquity have so poor documentary monuments as this one." All church records from its organization to 1685 have disappeared, and no documents exist that provide any names or information on the church prior to that date. From 1685 to 1772, a record was kept which included baptisms, marriages, and deaths, as well as a record of reception of members to the church and various church actions. But there is another gap from 1772 to 1818, although a list of names of members still living as of 1807 was preserved. No church documents remain for this period.

The introduction to the catalogue describes the efforts to determine the names and life dates of church members as follows:

"In this state of affairs an effort to give anything like a complete list of this Church's members is seen at once to be impossible. Any attempt to indicate who were members previous to 1685, or between 1772 and 1807, has to be based on documents of a collateral, and in some instances of a merely secular, character. But so often are the Pastor and the officers of this Church appealed to for information concerning persons presumed to have been members of the Church; and so dilapidated and worn is the solitary little volume which covers the period from 1685 to 1772, that it has seemed wise for the Church to put into type all it could tell, on adequate documentary grounds, of its own membership. In doing this it has appeared best to confine this record to such lists of names as for one reason or another had been authentically preserved, if not always by the Church itself, yet in connection with the planting of the Colony and the life of the Church. A considerable number of names of persons known to have been members at different periods in the recordless period, could indeed be gathered by the antiquarian investigator from family genealogies and the archives of other churches."

"[F]amily histories have been interrogated, monumental inscriptions inspected, and very many letters written and received. But after all efforts there are doubtless not omissions only, but mistakes. These will be easiest forgiven by those who know most of the difficulty of any undertaking like the present, and who will consider the special difficulties of memorials so imperfect as those here dealt with."

In addition to the records mentioned above, the catalogue includes names and life dates of the pastors and deacons of the church, original members, members that removed to Hadley, and those that formed the Second Church.

The call number for this text is F104.H3 H29 1885.

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