Dorchester Illustration no. 2270 Unitarian Church in Lower Mills
Dorchester’s third church society was formed as a result of disagreement at Second Church in Codman Square.
In the Boston area in the early 1800s ministers would routinely trade parishes to give congregations the opportunity to hear other preachers. John Codman, the first minister of Second Church, was chosen by the congregation and ordained in late 1808. Codman was a staunch Congregationalist and was an opponent of the transition of other Congregational churches to Unitarianism in this period. He would not agree to preaching by Unitarian-leaning ministers to his congregation. The more liberal of his congregation objected, and there was a period of very high tension when two factions met at the Church on the same day, hearing speakers of different opinions.
To defuse the situation, Codman bought out the pews of the liberals, who formed a new congregation and held their first meeting on May 6, 1813, in the Dorchester Reading Room, the back room of a barber shop which had been furnished as a reading room for the people at Lower Mills. At a second meeting in August, the members called themselves “The Proprietors of the New South Meeting-House.” The Second Church was known as the South Meeting-House, and the Third was now called “The New South.”
Their new building was completed in October, 1813, on the west side of Washington Street at Richmond Street and came to be known as Richmond Hall (now 1111-1113 Washington Street) in honor of the first pastor. Ministers from Boston preached until the installation of the Rev. Dr. Edward Richmond on June 25, 1817. The church building pictured in today’s illustration was built to an Asher Benjamin design in 1839-1840 on Richmond Street at Dorchester Avenue, located where the CVS store is. The church building faced Richmond Street.
The archive of these historical posts can be viewed on the blog at www.dorchesterhistoricalsocietyblog.org