Our History: A Timeline
First Parish stands on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett people, the original inhabitants of what is now Boston and Cambridge.
Our roots go back to 1632, when the first English settlers built a meeting house near the corner of Dunster and Mt. Auburn Streets—right at the heart of today’s Harvard Square in Cambridge. They built a fence around their settlement, and settler colonialism ultimately resulted in cultural genocide, war, land and water dispossession, enslavement, and scalp bounties.
A year later, in 1633, Thomas Hooker became our first minister, marking the beginning of our congregation’s long and evolving story. In 1636, Rev. Hooker and his followers left Cambridge to settle in what is now Hartford, Connecticut. A new congregation then gathered in Cambridge with Rev. Thomas Shepard as their minister.
Founded by Puritan settlers from England, First Parish has played a significant part in Cambridge’s history. Under leaders like Rev. Shepard—whose preaching helped bring Harvard College to Cambridge in 1636—the church became a hub for ideas and change. Our meeting house has hosted historic events such as:
Anne Hutchinson’s famous 1637 trial.
Harvard’s first commencement in 1642.
A meeting in 1648 that resulted in the Cambridge Platform, a blueprint for democratic church governance
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “American Scholar” address.
Early discussions that helped shape the Massachusetts Constitution, a model for the federal Constitution.
A Tradition of Religious Liberalism
Over the centuries, First Parish has changed both in spirit and in structure. We built new meeting houses as needed—the current fifth meeting house dates back to 1833—and moved from a Calvinist foundation to Arminianism, finally embracing Unitarianism and Unitarian Universalism. Our members have included influential city leaders and social reformers, and our community has long been a place for open dialogue, democratic ideals, and progressive change.
Reckoning with the Past, Building a Better Future
First Parish’s history mirrors both the strengths and the contradictions of American society. While we have championed participatory democracy and religious freedom, our story also includes the complex legacies of colonization and enslavement that are part of New England’s history. The timeline below spotlights moments in our complex history. Today, we work to overcome those legacies of oppression. As Unitarian Universalists we embrace love as the power that holds us together. Love is at the center of our shared Universalist values of pluralism, generosity, interdependence, equity, justice, and transformation.