Our History....
In the early 1830's, Fall River was becoming a successful mill town making cloth and thread. It was a busy town, experimenting with machinery driven by water or steam power to spin, weave, and finish textiles, successfully using the newest methods. Fall River was also a sea town, and ship building and trade were also important, not only economically, but in bringing new ideas from all parts of the world. These new ideas were not only economic.
Many of the town's young and successful people were dissatisfied with what they felt was the narrowness of the then five existing churches and their approaches to religion. To hear liberal preachers sometimes they walked to Newport to listen to William Ellery Channing or to Providence to hear Edward H. Hall. Channing was a Newport native who served the Federal Street Church in Boston (now the Arlington Street Church) and who returned in the summer to Newport. Hall was also a prominent preacher in a major Unitarian Church, and the listeners were taken with the idea of a rational religion.
Tiring of the inconvenience of traveling to worship, in 1831, they petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to draw up an Act of Incorporation. It was signed in January 1832. Unitarian services were begun and in 1834 they called their first minister and erected a new building. It was dedicated in January 1835. Eventually, as the town grew, it was moved from its original site at the corner of Second and Borden Streets to the present North Main Street site. That building was destroyed in September 1983 by an arson fire. Despite financial difficulities, the present building was erected; it was dedicated in June of 1986. All that was rescued from the old church were the Revere Bell, the baptismal font, a stained glass window, two marble plaques, and some pictures---and a strong faith and a sense of determination!
