page_title: Dighton Community Church
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dighton Community Church / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Dighton Community Church, Dighton, Massachusetts. Interior. Taken 2015.
context_page_description: Dighton Community Church is a non-denominational church in Dighton, Massachusetts. Formerly known as the Dighton Unitarian Church. The congregation, formally and legally known as the Pedo-Baptist Congregational Society due to the practice of infant baptism, was founded in 1769 and incorporated in 1798. The building was begun around 1769 and "completed enough for use" in Spring 1770. The building was finished in 1798. A tower was added in 1827 to house a Revere Bell.
context_section_description: In 1767, the first meeting house in Dighton Village burned to the ground. A new meeting house was built in an area called Buck Plain, but residents were unhappy with the location.
  In 1769, a group of well-off traders and businessmen formed the Pedo Baptist Congregational Society. (The name "Pedo" referred to the practice of infant baptism). This group selected a new building site in the village at Lower Four Corners, at the eastern edge of a cornfield used by the Pokanoket tribe. A tree in this field was used by Native Americans as a meeting place; King Philip (Metacomet) was said to have visited the tree many times.
  Construction on the church building was "completed sufficiently for use" by Spring 1770; however, the church was yet unfinished, with no tower or steeple.  During the Revolutionary War, the unfinished church was used as a barracks for colonial soldiers, and sometimes to hold sheep. Construction was finally finished on the main building in 1798. At this time the building still lacked a bell tower.
  Ezra Stiles arrived in Dighton from Newport with a congregation which included William Ellery. They lived together in the Whitmarsh house on Elm Street, just north of the church. Ellery represented Rhode Island as a member of the Continental Congress, and he traveled by horse from Dighton to Philadelphia for meetings. After the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, 1776, a copy was brought to Dighton. On July 13, 1776, a copy of the Declaration was read in the church, most likely read by Ezra Stiles.
  Stiles became the first minister of the church in 1777.
  The Pedo Baptist (Child Baptizing) Congregational Society of Dighton was incorporated June 25, 1798.
  In 1870 the church received an English Georgian era organ which had been used in the Harvard College Chapel. In 1949 a new organ was installed inside the case of the old organ.
  The name changed to Community Church in 1971.
caption: Church interior
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