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The outline of history is so simple:
One small church, gathered in 1729. The first meetinghouse was
erected in 1731 at the intersection of what was then, probably, "the road
over Goshen Hill" and "the road to McCall's." Another
building was built on Bolle's Hill in 1802. That is a name
we have lost, but the Church is still here, on Church Road.
But not the structure of 1802. That building was
significantly remodeled in 1852, and then burned in 1898.
The present church, built in 1899 in the style of the Victorian period,
is the one that is here. And attached to it is a Fellowship Hall,
completed in 2000. We have a commemorative wood-block of the Goshen
Congregational Church to celebrate our
275th Anniversary, and all of that history is recited on that small
keepsake! But what a wealth of stories is contained within that simple
outline.
The first minister, Jacob Eliot,
was called and ordained in 1729, and served until his death in 1766.
In addition to learned minister, Reverend Eliot was a farmer,
slaveholder, physician, practical joker, and traveler. Trips by horseback to
Boston were routine, to visit friends, to transact business, to talk politics.
His wife was Faith Robinson,
sister to the wife of Jonathan Trumbull. Stories abound, some quite worldly.
But he held church and community together throughout his 37-year
ministry, a period of great social and spiritual
upheaval, known as the Great Awakening. Two more
lengthy pastorates followed, then ten other ministers served the Church
through the balance of the 19th Century.
By this time, the very nature of Lebanon was starting to change,
agriculture was beginning to give way to other livelihoods, and younger
generations were moving away from family farms. The Goshen
Church struggled to carry on. But in 1927 they called Howard R. Bushnell
as their minister. The Reverend Bushnell took on the celebration
of the Church's 200th Anniversary in 1929 as a challenge. It was a
fine celebration, with over 300 in attendance, and a great deal of news
coverage. The event itself seemed to initiate a renewal within the
Church, and a `yes we can' perspective that is still with us today.
Reverend Bushnell's 44-year tenure as the pastor of Goshen Congregational Church is exceptional in terms of length and accomplishment, in
preserving a single small church through a period of great change in
society, providing a foundation for renewal and resurgence into the
21st Century.
The lives and times of any of
these ministers, and their congregations here in Goshen, are full of
stories, stories of joy and sadness, stories which reflect the history of our
country, stories of prosperity and decline, growth and decay, stories that
are the very life of this community. For Goshen is today a `community
of like-minded believers' as Reverend George Milne characterized us
when writing his history of the Town of Lebanon, but we are also an
integral part of the larger community of Lebanon, making somewhat of
a name for ourselves as the little church that can.
Goshen Congregational Church,
today, is a wonderfully active church, full of chiefs, and children, and
activities. We are well-served by the Revered Thomas A. Norton.
"With the Lord, one day is like
a thousand years and a thousand years like one day."
(NEB 2 Peter 3:8)
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