Church & State Walking Tour: First Baptist Church

36 West Main Street

The first Baptist society did not have a building but would just come together in someone’s home and worship. The society was established on September 30, 1811. The first group of members had fourteen men and only one woman.  It then expanded to thirty nine men and women in 1814. The Baptists had a church briefly but had to sell it. Now there were 93 members but the following year about thirty of the members withdrew and attended the services of the Baptist church in Southborough. A better, more spacious meeting house was built in 1835, here, on the corner of West Main Street and Central Street. Major renovations were done on the building in 1916 until it was finished. The building suffered major damages from the hurricane of ‘38 which included the steeple being flung onto Main Street during the storm. In 2012, when the congregation sold the building, it became a local home health agency.

~ Paul Revere’s bell: For many years, the town was lucky enough to have one of the ten documented bells cast by Paul Revere. The bell was kept in the belfry of the Baptist church, yet it was rarely rung. In 2011, the bell was sold to the Old South Meeting House where it was restored to its full beauty and is now struck for the people in the streets of Boston to hear.

Click here to return to “The Early Development of Westborough through Church and State” walking tour