Flat Jane Austen in Providence:
Sunday Worship

Sunday, May, 18--

My dearest friends,

I daresay you will criticize me writing to you on a Sunday but the mail ship leaves tomorrow at first light so I must make haste and dash this note to you while I am able. 

Today, Sunday was a day of worship here in town. My hosts worship at the Baptist Meeting House here in town. 

Jane at the First Baptist Church in America

This is the house that Roger Williams built. Baptists believe only knowing adults should be admitted to worship. They must testify to their conversion experience. How peculiar! The church is based on Scripture.

This building is new, as old as I! Before 1700 the congregants worshipped in each other's homes. The first meeting house was built nearby, a simple 20 X 20 foot structure. Soon after, there were enough people to build a meetinghouse twice that size next door. The Great Awakening saw a large number of converts and 'twas necessary to erect a much larger building down the street. Built between 1774-75 and designed by Joseph Brown, John Brown's brother, the design was borrowed from English churches.

First Baptist Church in America ink-on-paper engraving
by S. Hill (southwest view)

The actual building was done by shipwrights. All members were expected to help in the construction of the church and contributed oak from their farms for the the interior columns.  The ceiling is also made from products native to Providence including sand, Gipson, cow hair, and oyster shells. The church also features Palladian windows. It measures 80 feet X 80 feet plus the 185 foot steeple added shortly after.

 

1822 watercolor painting of First Baptist Meeting House by 
Joseph Partridge (1792-c.1832)

Looking south from North Main Street (Roger Williams) 
can you see the steeple of the Baptist Meeting House?

Roger Williams left this church he founded very early on and was a seeker the rest of his life. 

This is a brand new, 1816,  Congregational Meeting House  [editor's note: now a Unitarian church] for those who stayed true to their Puritan leanings. The previous version having been burned by arson in '14. They say this Congregation is different from the Puritan church and is far more liberal. 

Jane at the First Unitarian Church in Providence
formerly the First Congregational Church

'Twas designed by John Holden Greene, Providence’s foremost architect and a member of the congregation. This building features classical arches and urns combined with soaring pointed Gothic style windows with delicate tracery decoration.

In last year's gale, The Second Baptist Meeting-house succumbed and went to pieces under the combined force of the wind and the waves, whilst the tall spire of the First Baptist Church wavered and bent to the blast, but it fell not. The steeples of the first and second Congregational Churches were partly blown down, and the roofs of the Episcopal and first Congregational Churches were partly carried away.

Finally, I discover the whereabouts of the true and established church, down from where Roger Williams made his home. 

Jane at the Cathedral of St. John

This one is also relatively new, built in 1810 to replace the original 1722 wooden structure. This church was also designed and built by John Holden Greene in the early Gothic Revival style.

[editor's note: Directly across the Roger Williams National Memorial; now a center for exhibition and reconciliation on the trans-Atlantic slave trade]


I must attempt to sketch Church Street where there are some old houses.

There do not seem to be any Papist churches here in Providence. In spite of professed religious tolerance, the Papists are not any more welcome here than they are in England.

I must make haste and post this letter. I will write more soon. 

Yours, as ever,

Jane


editor's note on the Great Gale of 1815: Small State, Big History,
The Great Gale of 1815 Slams into Newport, Providence and Narragansett
By Christian McBurney