THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN CHELSEA
Destroyed in the Chelsea Fire of 1908
The first religious group to build a church in Chelsea was
the Baptists. The Baptists first gathered for meetings in 1830,
erecting their church on Broadway on the corner of Third Street in
1836. This church was the first to be built in Chelsea. As the
nineteenth century progressed, Chelsea became the ideal picture of
religious freedom in America with as many as twenty one houses of
worship at one time. The disastrous fire of 1908 destroyed thirteen
of Chelsea’s seventeen churches and three synagogues.
Unitarianism is a belief that God exists in only one person,
denying the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. The Unitarian religion
began to organize in Massachusetts in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The Unitarians were the second religious group
to organize in Chelsea. About 1836, a group of Unitarian society
members held their first meetings in Chelsea’s first school house on
the corner of Washington Avenue and Chestnut Street. It was at these
meetings the group became united and moved their meetings to a house
on Broadway near Williams Street. On January 8, 1837, Reverend W. H.
Knapp moved into the town and assumed leadership of the society.
Through Reverend Knapp’s preaching and organizing, the society grew
in numbers. Because of its growing numbers, the society moved to
Guild’s Hall in April and to Winnisimmet Hall, in the Park Street
School, the following January.
October 1838, Reverend Knapp was transferred to Canton.
Reverend Austin of Cambridge continued the services until July 14,
1839, when Reverend Samuel D. Robbins was installed as the
congregation’s minister. A general meeting of the congregation was
held in the following July 1840, and a building committee was
appointed to build a chapel. A piece of land in Hawthorn Square was
offered on lease, rent free for ten years, by the Winnisimmet Land
Company. The First Baptist Church had offered the Unitarians the use
of their church for services, when convenient, until the chapel was built.
On the ninth of July 1840, the frame of the chapel was raised. By
the ninth of September 1840, the building was completed and was
properly dedicated on September thirteenth. A number of years later
the chapel became unable to hold the increased numbers in the
congregation. A meeting was held at which time it was voted to build
a larger church. A new church building was built on Hawthorn Street
opposite Fourth Street. The Unitarian church was one of the thirteen
churches completely destroyed in the great Chelsea Fire of 1908.
