The First Congregational Church of Griswold is preparing to celebrate its 284th birthday on Sunday November 28^th, this year with a bit of a twist that many of you might just find interesting enough to discover first hand. So what is so special about 284 years other than old? Well, this church has a plan, a plan to raise the ante on not only the awareness of their own rich history but of how it shaped the history of the town, the state, and, yes, the country.

Starting this year and continuing for sixteen years, we will share with all that come, a piece of time, a chapter of a history, each succeeding year adding another chapter while telling and sharing the whole of what we know of this rich and fruitful history until the story of a church and a country has been told; fifteen chapters in all, each to be celebrated as a whole on the sixteenth year. And on the annual return of the day of that event, mark 300 years of service to God and country. The history having been written and our story told.

This year we start at the beginning - 1696 when Samuel Lenardson came to Pachaug country from Massachusetts as the first white settler. Located on land east of Appoquoshock Hill, known in more modern times as the Burton District, the land off Bethel Road comprised in part of the Chikan property and former Karjala farm. By this time the English colonies in America had reached 275,000 with Boston at 7,000 as the largest city and New York with 5,000. For the next twenty years people came to Pachaug. At first they came from nearby settlements, then from the older settlements in Massachusetts, and some from Salem to escape the witchcraft frenzy of the time. By 1715 the settlements in Pachaug found it very inconvenient to attend church and Freemen’s Meetings in the southern part (Preston City). In bad weather traveling was especially difficult. So, like towns before them had done, it was voted "that there shall be two societies in this town by a fair division". By December of the next year, the members of this new society had decided to build their own Church and meeting house. However, as our history unfolds, the story of sorting out the location of the church (east side of the river vs. west side of the river) in Those who attend our Heritage Sunday will also will hear or read of such memorable events as the summer of 1718 when people from many miles around assembled for the raising of the church when suddenly a young man climbed to the topmost timber and stood on his head on the ridgepole of its roof. To save face, we will not mention his name (Elijah Belcher), but we will tell you he obviously did not fall off because years later he began his many years of service as a deacon.

It was the business of these people, forty-three men and women, nineteen men and twenty-four women, to build up and fully develop a Christian Society, a society favorable to truest manhood. They had roads to lay out, bridges to build, forests to cut down, fields to enclose and bring under cultivation. They had their homes to brighten, replacing primitive log houses with more comfortable dwellings; they had schools to establish, justice to administer, the church of God to maintain and edify; they had these things to do themselves and to agree in doing them. They set about their work at once and with diligence. I conclude that before a year had passed, there was a good cart bridge over the river. The society was at once districted for schools and the school money fairly divided.

Heritage Day Committee