Upriver History: St. John's in Warehouse Point, an 1809 meetinghouse remade as a Gothic church
Seventy people petitioned in 1802 for an Episcopal church to serve four towns.
EAST WINDSOR - In September 1802, seventy people signed a petition to form an Episcopal church at Warehouse Point to serve East Windsor, Windsor, Enfield and Ellington, according to the National Register nomination for St. John's Episcopal Church.
Among the founders were Capt. James Chamberlain, who opened a road from Warehouse Point to the Connecticut River and ran a ferry, and Gen. Charles Jencks, who owned a local gin distillery, the nomination says. That October, a fire destroyed East Windsor's First Congregational Church. Several Warehouse Point members of that church were accused of setting it, tried in Hartford and acquitted, and then joined St. John's.
In 1808, 53 members pledged more than $2,600 and 27 days of labor toward a building. Hartford builder-architect Samuel Belcher designed the church, which went up on the village green in 1809 and was moved about 200 feet east, off the green, in 1844.
In 1855 the New Haven firm of Austin & Brown remodeled it for $6,000, adding arched windows, vaulted ceilings and a chancel. The nomination says the work tried to give the Federal-style meetinghouse the look of an English parish church.
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