The First Presbyterian Church of Hartford City is a Presbyterian church in Hartford City, Indiana, United States. The edifice is the oldest church building in a small city that at one time was a bustling community with as many as ten glass factories – and over 20 saloons.First Presbyterian Church, Hartford City, Indiana, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, Description.See Dale, p.117-118 for list of saloons, and p.120-121 for glass factories. Located at the corner of High and Franklin Streets, the church is part of the Hartford City Courthouse Square Historic District. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
Construction of the house of worship began in 1892 and was completed in 1893. The church building is considered one of the city's best examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture.First Presbyterian Church, Hartford City, Indiana, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, Statement of Significance. One aspect of the building that makes it particularly notable is its windows. The church features massive stained glass windows that were hand-crafted in Belgium and assembled by local glass workers originally from that country.
At the time the church was constructed, the region was undergoing substantial economic growth related to the discovery of natural gas, and this period is known as the Indiana Gas Boom. Most of the city's distinctive buildings within its Courthouse Square Historic District were built during that period, including both buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places—the Blackford County Courthouse and the First Presbyterian Church.Much of the church history information used herein was from a collection of documents made available from the Joseph Wood Evans Memorial Special Collections and Archives Center of Hanover College's Duggan Library. Those documents include Amstutz's Centennial Brochure, First Presbyterian Church, Hartford City, Indiana; Hall, Hill, and Henley's History of the First Presbyterian Church, Hartford City, Indiana 1943-1958; “Church Celebrates 110th Anniversary Here Sunday”, Hartford City News-Times, October 12, 1953; and “Presbyterian Church in Ground Breaking Ceremony”, Hartford City News-Times, August 24, 1959.
Presbyterians in Hartford City In the 1840s, the community that would eventually be named Hartford City was still named Hartford. Methodists had been holding Christian religious services in the area since the 1830s. A second branch of Christianity came to the area on December 18, 1843, when the Presbyterian Church of Hartford was founded by a group of thirteen people and the Reverend Samuel N. Steel.Biographical and historical record of Jay and Blackford Counties…, pp. 749-750. The community's original Presbyterian church building was built on the southeast edge of the village in 1844, and was located on Mulberry Street, between Water and Washington Streets.A History of Blackford County, Indiana…, pp. 45-45 and pp. 66-67. Hartford was a small, unincorporated farming community at that time, and farm land was only two blocks away from the church. The church was renamed Blackford Presbyterian Church in 1853. That name was short-lived, as the church became known as the Presbyterian Church of Hartford (again) in 1855.Shinn, Section II, p. 254.
Today, the church's original Mulberry Street location is about two blocks from the current courthouse square of the city of Hartford City. Hartford was renamed Hartford City in the 1850s when it was discovered that a community named Hartford already existed in Indiana. The renamed community grew enough to incorporate as a town in 1857.See the Blackford County Commissioner's records for 1857 that are kept online by the Allen County (Indiana) Public Library. Select Read Online, and page forward to page N7. The Presbyterian congregation was also growing, although the church had yet to keep the same minister for more than three years.Biographical and historical record of Jay and Blackford Counties…, p. 750. Members of the church's congregation included “some of the county's most respected citizens”, with surnames such as Willman, Gable, Reasoner, Fulton, Emshwiller, Woolard, Sanderson, and McEldowney.Amstutz p. 3. The Amstutz article is not numbered, therefore “page 3” refers to the third page of the article. The article also does not list Amstutz as the author, but says it was prepared by the Historical Committee. The Hartford City New-Times, in its article "Church Celebrates 110th Anniversary Here Sunday", identifies "The First 100 Years" article as "a very comprehensive centennial booklet...prepared by Rev. Amstutz and an assisting committee." (The area's first settler was Benjamin Reasoner).Most of these surnames were later profiled in Shinn's Biographical memoirs of Blackford County, Ind…..
As the house of worship became more crowded, the ladies of the congregation began a fund for a new church. On March 7, 1868, the Presbyterians purchased a lot on the north side of Hartford City at the corner of High and Franklin Streets, not far from the location of a Methodist church used in the 1840s. The lot cost $150. A new wood-frame Presbyterian Church was quickly constructed. Labor for construction was donated by the church members and friends. The new church was larger and better-furnished than the previous church, and was heated with two stoves. However, within the next two decades, overcrowding again became a problem. Members of the congregation were unwilling to go deep into debt for a new structure, but they began to work to acquire the financial resources necessary to achieve their goal of a larger house of worship.A History of Blackford County, Indiana…, p. 67.
The women of the church's congregation again played a major role in fundraising for a new church building, with various projects and clubs. Among the fundraising groups were the Sewing Circle, the Reading Circle, and the Aftermath Society. In 1883, an additional group was established with the extensive name of "The Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of Hartford City, Muncie Presbytery, Auxiliary to the Northwest Branches of the Presbyterian Church." That organization, which started with 6 members, had as many as 80 members and guests at meetings within the year.Amstutz, p. 4. Putting 80 people in perspective, the whole town had a population of just 1,470 in 1880.
Construction
In 1890, Reverend A. Judson Arrick was installed as the new pastor of Hartford City's Presbyterian Church. At his urging, members worked even harder to raise funds for a new church building. Eventually, plans for the new building were submitted, and a contract was awarded to Alec Gable for the construction of a new brick building. In 1892, the wood-frame Presbyterian Church was moved one block east to Jefferson Street, enabling construction of a new house of worship to begin on the Franklin and High Street site. The cornerstone for the new building was laid during the same year, as construction began. Unfortunately, Reverend Arrick preached his last sermon in Hartford City on September 6, 1892, and was unable to see the completed church. In December, the roof was completed and floor laid, and church members held their first service in the partially completed structure on January 8, 1893. Reverend J. W. Fulton was the new pastor.Amstutz, on page 5, discusses the January 5, 1893 edition of Hartford City's weekly Telegram, which said “The Presbyterians will hold their first services in their new church Sunday”. The first Sunday following January 5, 1893 (a Thursday) is on January 8.
By July 1893, the new church building was completed. The well-attended Sunday dedication ceremony (July 9, 1893) included the Reverend Charles H. Payne, a noted New York divine, in addition to visitors from nearby cities and towns.The dedication ceremony was described in the July 13, 1893, edition of the Telegram, a local weekly newspaper. For this reason, the ceremony is sometimes mistakenly identified as happening on Sunday, July 13. However, July 13, 1893, occurred on a Thursday.Reverend Charles H. Payne was a distinguished Methodist that often gave church dedication sermons, including a ceremony in nearby Kokomo in 1896. At the crowded dedication, it was announced that $5,000 would be needed to pay off all debt on the building. A total of $4,809 in donations was pledged at that time. Later that evening, additional funds were donated, and the grand total for the day was $5,529. Among the donors were five individuals that pledged $300 each, plus one group (Aftermath Society) also pledged $300. Thus, the church was free of debt.Amstutz, pp. 6-7. The building was considered expensive for the time, costing over $10,000. However, the congregation's years of planning and generosity were rewarded with a debt-free structure that was considered a grand achievement. The church had two main rooms: the sanctuary on the west side of the building, and an east-side lecture room.
The old wood-frame church was not abandoned. It was rented for a few years and used for storage. Sometime prior to 1895, it was deconstructed again – and moved to the south side of town. The wood-frame building served as the location for a mission Sunday School, and attendance averaged 30 to 40 students each Sunday.Amstutz, p. 7.
Architecture
The citizens of the community were duly impressed with the new church. One of the local newspapers said "The edifice is one that does a credit to the city as well as the congregation...a monument of which they may be justly proud."See Gas Belt Review, p. 3, by the Blackford County Historical Society . The booklet contains original newspaper articles from the Hartford City area newspapers from 1893 to 1896. Among the local newspapers that existed in 1893 were the weekly (Hartford City) Telegram and the weekly Hartford City Times. The church building is considered Hartford City's best example of a form of the Romanesque Revival architectural style known as Richardsonian Romanesque. H. H. Richardson's interpretation of the Romanesque architectural style became popular in America in the late 19th century, especially for churches and public buildings. Typical of his style was a large single tower, round arches above windows and doors, groups of windows, gabled roofs, and contrasting color or texture in exterior stone and brick masonry.See “Romanesque/Romanesque Revival” web page for Buffalo Architecture and History.
Alec Gable, the architect that designed Hartford City's First Presbyterian Church, incorporated many of these typical Richardson features in the church's blueprint.The First Presbyterian Church, Hartford City, Indiana, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form is the source for much of the following architectural discussion. The building's exterior is brick trimmed with limestone – a mixing of exterior textures typical of the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style. Indiana is famous for its limestone, which has been used in monuments, universities, and government buildings found throughout the United States.Indiana Limestone Institute of America web site. The church's main façade is gabled with a round-arched doorway and a large stained-glass window. A square bell tower, located on the northwest corner, divides the north and west sides of the building. The top of the tower is steep-pitched, pyramid-shaped, and crowned with a Christian cross. These are more characteristics typical of Richardson's designs. The corners of the tower form piers that rise above the base of the roof, and each pier has a circular cap that slopes to a ball-tipped point.