No. 5241 Second Church, painting on brick.
Edward A. Huebener, a former Board member of the Dorchester Historical Society, was a collector of materials relating to Dorchester history including a very large collection of graphic materials, including prints and photographs, now owned by the Society. His very own contribution to this group of materials was the idea of taking a brick from a house that had been demolished and asking a local illustrator to paint a picture of the house upon the brick. The painted bricks may be viewed at the Dorchester Historical Society.
Second Church, built in 1805-1806, is located at Codman Square.
This brick does not have a number and does not appear on the list of bricks. The original was lost and a replacement was painted in the 1980s by Bruno Gizzi
No. 1898 Detail from 1918 Bromley atlas showing the east side of Codman Square.
Under Thaddeus Harris’ tenure at the First Church it was seen that the congregation had outgrown its accommodations, so the Second Church was set off to be located at Codman Square. The Second Parish was formed by vote of the Town of Dorchester, June 19, 1807, and the Second Church was organized by a Council, January 1, 1808, with sixty-four charter members “affectionately dismissed” from the First Church. The new church building was dedicated October 30,1806, and Dr. John Codman became its first pastor in December, 1808. It is interesting to note that the bell in Second Church was cast by Paul Revere. It was at this time that the lines were beginning to be drawn distinctly between the rigid and liberal portions of the churches.
Unitarianism existed as a faith but not as a denomination. Dr. Harris and the First Parish belonged to the liberal order, and the new or Second Church included those who were in sympathy with him and his views. The new minister of the Second Church possessed strong Orthodox views. Liberal members of the Second Church disagreed with Dr. Codman, because he refused to exchange pulpits with the liberal members of the Boston Ministers’ Association. A long and bitter controversy followed and led to a confrontation.
No. 2324 Lithograph once owned by Huebener now in the collection of the Dorchester Historical Society.
No. 716 Engraving after a painting by Huntingdon published in Memoir of John Codman, D.D. by William Allen, D.D. late president of Bowdoin College with reminiscences by Joshua Bates, D.D. late president of Middlebury College. Boston: T.R. Marvin and S.K. Whipple & Co., 1853.
No. 462 Illustration in: Good Old Dorchester by William Dana Orcutt. Cambridge, 1893.
Those who were dissatisfied agreed to sell Dr. Codman their pews and to withdraw from the Church membership. The seceders organized the Third Religious Society (called then the New South Parish), a distinct Unitarian parish. Their first meeting was May 6, 1813, when the construction of a meeting house was planned.
In 1829 twenty-one members were dismissed from the Second Church to form a new church in the south part of the town, which took the name of the Village Church.
For more information, consult:
Chaffee, John R. The History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts. Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1917.
Dorchester Old and New, 1630-1930. Dorchester: Chapple Publishing Company for the Dorchester, Massachusetts, Tercentenary Committee, 1930.
King’s Hand-Book of Boston. Boston: Moses King Corporation, 1889.
Orcutt, William Dana. Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town, 1630-1893. Cambridge, The University Press, 1908.
Proceedings of the Second Church and Parish in Dorchester; Exhibited in a Collection of Papers. Published Agreeably to a Vote of the Church. Second edition. Boston: Printed by Samuel T. Armstrong, 1812.
Review of the Dorchester Controversy. From the Panoplist. Boston, 1813.