3. This Was Hinsdale (Rev)

First Congregational Church organized December 28, 1795, meeting probably in Rufus Tyler's tavern on the Maple Street Flats. Organization was led by Deacon Richard Starr helped by Reverend Theodore Hinsdale who arrived here the previous April from the First Church in Windsor (CT).

Yet, two months earlier, Reverend Hinsdale had his doubts according to his diary: "I fear there is such a want of spirit and wisdom in the new Parish that it will be a long time, if ever, before they will come to any order in religion."

He also noted "My time is chiefly taken up in the affairs of my new plantation, which are all out of order; planted pease and beans and other seeds; but am interrupted daily by cattle, sheep and swine breaking in upon my lot; they have been in quiet possession so long they seem to claim the farm as their own and obstinately refuse to quit their hold."

As a man of the cloth however, he considered all these "affairs as comparatively trivial". Once the church organized and grew, "Mr. Hinsdale's interest and usefulness in the new church continued to the day of his death (December 29, 1818, aged 81 years "not living a day beyond his usefulness"). Buried in the Maple Street Cemetery, a handsome monument to his memory is on the left upon entering.

In May, 1795, the Parish petitioned the General Court to be incorporated as a town with the name Green or Russia; that petition was not granted. In 1803 another petition with the name Hinsdale was granted and in 1804 was recognized as a town.