148 A HALF CENTURY. 



other officers of the General Court. The church and town were also 

 remarkable in their growth. Three years after the church was formed 

 there were but forty-six ratable persons in the town, while at that time 

 there were one hundred and seventy-seven in Hartford. One hundred 

 years later Farmington had seven hundred more inhabitants than 

 Hartford, and in 1774, its population exceeded that of Hartford by 

 more than a thousand, and it had become, with one exception, the 

 town with the greatest number of inhabitants in the state. 



The Farmington church has been a mother of churches and of for- 

 eign missions. About twenty-five years after the church was organ- 

 ized, a colony went out to Mattatuck, and finally became the First 

 Clmrch of Waterbury, from which at least a dozen other Congrega- 

 tional churches have sprung, and as many more in other directions 

 have sprung from the mother church. Among these are the three 

 largest Congregational churches in the state. The enterprise, or 

 unrest, which led to the founding of some of these churches led to the 

 peopling of the east and west parts of New Britain, as far as Christian 

 Lane and Great Swamp. 



In 1705, the southeastern part of the town was incorporated into a new 

 society called Great Swamp. A meeting-house was soon erected at 

 Christian Lane, and a church formed. The parish extended from 

 Sraalley street, New Britain, to the Blue Hills near Meriden, or 

 Southington. In less than twenty years, an effort was made to build 

 a new meeting-house. After much disagreement, failing to unite on a 

 location, the General Assembly at last ordered one to be built, sent 

 out a committee from Hartford to erect and finish it, and taxed the 

 people to pay for it. This house was more than a mile to the southeast 

 of the other, and so much further from thfe families in the north part of 

 the parish. These families petitioned for the privilege of having worship 

 nearer their homes for four of the winter months each year on account 

 of the distance, bad weather, and bad roads, f>nd to be excused from 

 paying for the support of worship at the Kensington Church for that 

 part of the year. The petition was not granted at the time, but after 

 fifteen years of frequent petitioning, their prayer was answered, and 

 a new ecclesiastical society was incorporated in 1754, named New 

 Britain. In 1758 a church was organized, and Rev. John Smalley was 

 installed pastor. A plain meeting-house had been erected, and for 

 some years the church was harmonious in action. The houses were 

 then in Stanley Quarter, on East street, and in Hart Quarter, there 

 being but four near the center or within a half mile of the present 

 churches. 



After a time there was a difference in sentiment. Some of the 

 ministers in this part of the state became dissatisfied with the theologi- 

 cal teachings at Yale, and instituted a separate theological school at 



