The Second Free Will Baptist Church (SFWBC) is one of the oldest Black congregations in Providence, formed around 1830 by a group who left the African Union Meeting House, itself formed from the departure of African-American congregants from the white-dominated First Baptist Church in 1819. By the early 1840s, the SFWBC had a church on the west side of the growing city, and in 1842, a new church building was erected at the corner of Pond and Angle Streets, where it would remain for over one hundred years. From its origins, church members were politically active, choosing to join the Free Will denomination because of its opposition to slavery rather than the Baptist convention, which countenanced bondage at that time.

From 1846 until the Civil War, Reverend Edward Scott, himself a man who escaped slavery in Virginia, led the congregation and organized annual Emancipation Day parades to agitate for abolition in this country. Reverend Scott also led the community in action to advocate for equal rights for people of color. Another notable congregant included Sissieretta Jones, the most famous African-American soprano of the late 19th Century, singing at the White House and Carnegie Hall as well as internationally. The activism of the church continued into the 20th Century with pastors like the Reverend Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, an educator, college president, and political activist. Congressman Joseph E. Newsome was also a member of the church, chair of the Board of Trustees, and church organist. While attending a conference in Ivory Coast, Newsome learned of the struggle of Liberian students in the midst of civil war and organized an exchange program that brought many Liberian students to Providence. Many of those students became residents of Providence and members of the church. They continue the church's tradition of providing a haven for immigrants and refugees in a dangerous world.

When the city announced in the early 1960s that it would purchase and demolish the church's home on Stewart Street, the congregation entered a period of crisis and uncertainty. Deacon Ralph Simmons was among those who chose to keep the congregation together and build a new home on Chester Avenue in South Providence. Deacon Simmons is the living memory of the church. He joined the congregation in the 1940s and has been gathering, preserving, and sharing the church's history since that time.

Today, the church building contains the pews and old woodwork of their former home on Stewart Street and embodies a long tradition of activism, community, and welcome.

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I want to thank Deacon Ralph Simmons for his hard work over many years gathering and preserving the archives of the church and for his generosity in sharing that work.

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During the early 19th Century, textile mills, like Grant Mill in the city of Providence, were being built across Rhode Island. The textile industry required hands to work the many machines that produced the new wealth, and Providence’s population grew dramatically with this industrial expansion. From 7,000 inhabitants around 1800, the city had near 20,000 in 1835 and 50,000 in 1860--seven times the 1800 population in three generations.

The pull of the new industries drew people from not just local and regional farms and towns, but from across oceans too. A new wave of immigrants began to pour into Rhode Island in the 1820s, first to build canals and railroads, and later to labor in the mills. This wave was drawn largely from Ireland, reaching a peak during the Irish Famine of the 1840s. In 1860, about 10,000 (or 20%) of the inhabitants of Providence had been born in Ireland. When American-born children of Irish immigrants are included, they made up about 40% of the total population of the city, a radical transformation.

Back in the 1830s, when there were only a few hundred Irish families in Providence, the first Catholic parish in the city was organized to serve the spiritual needs of these new arrivals. Father John Corry, an Irish immigrant himself, was appointed parish priest and began to look for a site to build a church. He found it impossible to buy a plot of land himself. Protestant-dominated Providence did not want to sell land for a Catholic church. Prejudice against Catholicism--and Irish immigrants in particular--was widespread. Francis Hye, one of the few Irish arrivals to become a citizen at the time, was able to purchase a plot along High Street where the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul stands today. He bought the land from Isaac Mathewson in Duty Greene’s store near Hoyle Square, today’s Canonicus Square. When Mathewson learned that Hye intended to transfer the land to the Catholic diocese, the story goes, he offered to buy back the lot at a significant premium, but Corry refused, realizing the value of the land and its position in the westward growing city.

The first Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul--the first Catholic parish in the city serving these new immigrants from Ireland--was dedicated in 1838. In 1872, when Rhode Island was elevated to a Catholic diocese, the newly appointed bishop planned a grand new cathedral to serve the ever-expanding Catholic population of the city. The Cathedral became a monument to the Irish Catholic experience in Providence, facing hostility and prejudice, but ultimately reweaving the fabric of the city to become central to its civic life.

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I want to thank Diocesan Historian Reverend Robert Hayman for his hard work assembling a history of the Catholic Church in Rhode Island and his generosity in sharing that work.

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While redevelopment often erases a city's past, the constant re-building of a city over time also leads to the loss of historical memory. One such site is 755 Westminster Street, a historic building from 1899, which replaced the High Street Congregational Church originally built in 1835.

In the 1830s, Providence was still in the first phase of industrial expansion, growing from less than 7,000 people around 1800 to almost 20,000 by the mid-1830s. At the time, churches were often at the center of people's lives and informed how they understood their place in the world.

Congregationalism is a Protestant sect that still exists today and was born out of the Puritan faith brought to this area with the English immigrants of the 17th Century. By the 1830s, Congregationalists were one of the leading faiths in Providence, along with Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and Universalists: all Protestants. The Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that was spurred--in part--by anxiety around changes in society caused by industrialization, revitalized religious life in the early 19th Century. At the time, many churches focused not just on an afterlife, but on reforming the living world through moral practice and belief. They often supported the education of women, the strict observance of the Sabbath day, total abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, and notably, the abolition of slavery.

While the economic expansion of Providence was tied to the cotton produced by enslaved people in the South, that expansion also reshaped society and produced social movements that targeted the roots of those changes. Many Protestant sects, following the early moral leadership of the Quakers, became staunchly anti-slavery. In 1836, this movement gathered itself for the first meeting of a statewide organization dedicated to the abolition of slavery. They met at the High Street Congregational Church, newly built on this site. Over 200 people gathered here for speeches and lectures and famous Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison made an appearance.

The Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society continued to agitate for the end of slavery until after the Civil War when the U.S. Constitution was amended to abolish it. After the war, the High Street Church reorganized, and the building became the home of the State Normal School, a teachers' college that eventually became Rhode Island College. For a short time in the 1890s, the church was the Star Theatre, which burned in 1899 and was replaced by the brick business block that still stands at 755 Westminster Street...another layer in the evolution of the ever-changing city.

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The church that you see here today was not the original structure built on this site in 1750. The earlier church was made of wood; its chimney can still be seen in the interior of the current church. Here, Samuel Niles was one of the first in a long line of Indian ministers that had connections to the Narragansett Indian Church. Upon his death in 1785, Niles was laid to rest in the church's burial ground. He was dearly loved by his family and community, having one of the most finely carved headstones in the cemetery.

Niles was born in 1706 and served as a traditional spiritual leader, or pawwaw, to the Narragansett before converting to Christianity during the "Great Awakening." Niles was not accepted by the English and accused of preaching without license. In 1750, Niles formed a Separatist Christian community and served many Native communities throughout his life, including the Narragansett, Niantic, Mohegan, Montauk, and Pequot. Niles broke from traditional Christianity in many ways. For one, while he was accepted by his Native peers, he was never properly ordained through the process of the "laying of hands." Secondly, he was illiterate; though, this did not stop Niles from preaching the word of God in his own way.

Revolution was on the minds of many in 1776, including the Narragansett, who expelled minister Joseph Fish and schoolmaster Edmund Deake from the reservation. Both were working and living there, having been sponsored by the New England Company. The Narragansett preferred the preaching of fellow Indians, whether sanctioned or not. For some time, Fish had decried the Narragansetts' preferences, saying in a letter "They had rather follow that ignorant, proud, conceited, obstinate Teacher, poor Samuel Niles, than Attend regular preaching of Sound Gospel Doctrine." The Narragansett likely preferred Niles because he blended their traditional ways with Christianity. For one, Niles understood the importance of their annual powwow. Accordingly, he ensured that the powwow was sponsored by the Church.

Niles was politically involved in his community at a rather tumultuous time. By the mid/late 18th century, the English strategy to abuse, intoxicate, and lure Native people into debt was taking its toll on every tribe in the region. Niles opposed the actions of Sachem Thomas Ninigret (1738-1769), who was illegally selling Narragansett land. Many of the land sales were done in response to immense debt that Thomas Ninigret and his family (not the tribe) had accrued in Rhode Island and abroad while Thomas attended school in England, an arrangement made for him and his family when "King Tom' was still a boy. Niles and other Narragansett tribal members urged a moratorium on the sale of Narragansett lands, while others demanded he step down as Sachem. A temporary moratorium on land sales was granted in 1767.

Niles continued to preach until his death in 1785. One of the most famous Indian preachers of the 18th century, Mohegan minister Samson Occom, saw Niles as a true mentor.

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In 1847, the Eighth Baptist Church of Providence was founded at the corner of Davis and Common Streets. It was one of many Baptist churches in the city to be founded by former members of the First Baptist Church in America, located on the East Side, which had been founded two centuries earlier by Roger Williams. Residents of the Smith Hill area wanted a church closer to their homes. By 1857, the original building was relocated to Jefferson Street so it could expand to meet needs of its growing congregation. The church renamed itself the Jefferson Street Baptist Church. During the late nineteenth century, Smith Hill changed greatly in its ethnic and religious character, becoming a home for immigrants from Ireland, Scandinavia, Nova Scotia, and (most importantly for this story) Armenia. This reflected general trends in the city of Providence, which by the early twentieth century had a population that was 70% immigrants or the children of immigrants. This shift led many Protestant churches to close as many immigrants practiced other religious beliefs. Often the churches were torn down or converted to highly secular purposes – but the Jefferson Street Baptist Church would avoid such a fate. In an act of preservation, the Jefferson Street parish and neighboring Park Street Free Baptist Church decided to merge into a single congregation in 1912. Although the Jefferson Street Church was older, the decision was made that the newly-formed United Baptist Church would keep the Park Street structure and sell the Jefferson Street one. Meanwhile, the Armenian community in Providence grew. In 1888, Providence was recorded as having a small Armenian community of thirty-five persons; nine years later, this had grown to five hundred. In 1897, the Very Reverend Vaghinag Sisagian became the first pastor of the Armenian community in Providence. The community rented a location at 50 Exchange Place (present-day Kennedy Plaza). Plans to buy or build a building of its own never came to fruition until 1913, when the Armenian congregation purchased the then-vacant Jefferson Street Church. It was consecrated in 1914 by Bishop Moushegh Seropian under the name of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob Armenian Apostolic Church. The creation of Interstate Route 95 in the 1960s greatly altered the landscape of Smith Hill. Jefferson Street, once a longer street that connected with Smith Street just behind the State House, became a small lane on which Sts. Sahag and Mesrob is the only major building. Parking and accessibility to the church became a major issue. Between 1961 and 1971 church membership had declined from 831 to 337. The church leadership considered the creation of Route 95 to be the principal cause of this decline. In an effort to take advantage of these drastic changes, Sts. Sahag and Mesrob decided to capitalize on its location in one of the most prominent locations in the city – just above where Route 95 intersects with Route 146. The distinctive blue cross, added in the 1930s, had become a noted landmark not only to those on the highway but also to pilots approaching T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. By 1979 the original cross had become corroded, and it was replaced by a larger cross that is 14 feet high and 15 feet wide. Since 1994 the church has stood out even further from its surroundings by prominently flying both the American and Armenian flags, which was originally done to commemorate the Armenian Youth Federation Olympics held in Providence that year, but the flags remained even after the games were over. Saints Sahag and Mesrob remains an important center for the Armenian community in Providence. With Route 95 now an accepted part of the city landscape, church membership has rebounded. Although Roger Williams likely never foresaw a time when there would be Armenian Apostolic Christians in the New World (nor for that matter the invention of neon lights), the neon blue cross of Sts. Sahag and Mesrob stands as a monument to his vision of religious freedom for all.

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“We claim . . . that to deprive the colored people of this State of the immunities of citizenship, on account of the color of the skin, (a matter over which they have no control), is anti-republican; and against such a procedure we enter our solemn protest.” This strongly worded missive reached Thomas Wilson Dorr and made clear the position of Providence’s Black community. When word had spread that the Dorrites were qualifying their call to abolish unfair requirements for suffrage and excluding Black voters, they responded swiftly.

The petition, Dorr was told, was written by Alexander Crummell (1819-1898), the minister of Christ Church during the Dorr Rebellion. A native of New York, Crummell had been born free and received an excellent education. While in New York, he had been involved in an effort to strike down the property requirement for suffrage, though the attempt was unsuccessful. In Providence, Crummell quickly became an influential figure in Providence’s Black community.

Crummell’s petition anticipates the arguments against suffrage for Black men and refutes them, drawing attention to inconsistencies in the People’s Party’s calls for so-called universal suffrage.

Black citizens decried the use of the word “white” to define universal suffrage in the People’s Constitution. The petition argued: “We are mostly native born citizens. We have lent our best strength in the cultivation of the soil, have aided in the development of its resources, and have contributed our part to its wealth and importance."

Crummell aligned the cause of his fellow Black citizens to that of the colonists fighting to gain their freedom from Great Britain. “We appeal to that great written charter of American liberty--the declaration of independence--in support of our protestation. We believe that ‘all men are created free and equal’; and we affirm, that no tinge of the skin can possibly invalidate that cardinal doctrine of our country’s liberty, or make nugatory or partial the political privileges which, as deductions, may proceed from it."

This site at 400 Benefit Street was the former site of St. Stephen’s Church. Crummell’s congregation, Christ Church, was eventually absorbed by St. Stephen’s in the 1850s.

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Only two months before Washington would burn at the hands of British troops during the War of 1812, Providence would witness the destruction by fire of a major monument atop the East Side. A victim of arson, the First Congregational Church (1795) was destroyed June 14, 1814. The structure that burned was the congregation’s second church; the first was situated on the present site of the Superior Courthouse on South Main Street. An unnamed man, presumed to have suffered from mental illness, placed a lighted candle inside one of the exterior columns. Writing 72 years after the fact, historian Welcome Arnold wrote that “it was supposed that . . . [he] wished to see what kind of a sight the two steeples would make burning and falling to the ground.” Although the town offered a reward for the person responsible, they never prosecuted anyone for the crime. The church was rebuilt soon after, designed by Providence architect John Holden Greene. The Federal-style building has classical arches and urns combined with soaring pointed Gothic style windows with delicate tracery decoration. Originally the First Congregational Church, the congregation became associated with the Unitarian movement and eventually changed its name.

If the church is open, have a look inside; after taking in the spare and tasteful elegance of its interior, note the tight rectangular pews that are arranged in sequence along the ground floor and mezzanine. Spaces for contemplation and devotion? Yes, but also prime real estate in a city that was leading the Industrial Revolution and, by 1816, was well on its way toward becoming one of the most affluent cities in America. By 1910, Providence was second in the nation in terms of per-capita wealth.

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As the population of the East Side grew in the 18th century, residences sprang up quickly along Benefit Street. Intended for “the common benefit of all,” Benefit Street encouraged the construction of homes higher on the ridge of modern-day College Hill while still remaining within existing property limits. This was possible because of the very narrow, but long, plots that Roger Williams designated for the new community of Providence in 1636. These plots began at the edge of the Great Salt River and Cove, and extended up the hill. Colonists typically used the higher land to plant fruit orchards and graze livestock. Unlike many other New England towns, the Providence settlement faced the waterway, rather than surrounding a meeting house. The emphasis on religious liberty explains this choice: since colonial authorities in Rhode Island could not force men and women to worship, the Church did not serve as the center of the community, literally or figuratively.

This unique orientation of the settlement did not mean, however, that Providence townspeople did not worship. Most did so, and they first used private homes before a meeting house was constructed to better serve the religious needs of the community. Roger Williams founded the first Baptist congregation in the U.S. in 1638. In 1775, while Providence enjoyed economic success, the Baptists made a new and bold move in erecting this magnificent building, the First Baptist Church. The largest surviving wooden structure from Colonial America, it combines the simple hall of a traditional New England meeting house with the most fashionable English architectural features, such as the steeple, modeled after a version of the one at St. Martin in the Fields (1724), on Trafalgar Square in London, by architect James Gibbs. Brown University, founded as a Baptist college, has held its annual commencement in the church every year since 1776.

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The congregation of Ebenezer Baptist Church was born from the first independent African-American church in Providence. In 1819, black congregants withdrew from the First Baptist Church and built the African Union Meeting and Schoolhouse. In 1884, an independent congregation born from this community was organized under the name Ebenezer, worshipping on A Street and later at 135 Dodge Street in the city’s West End. The beautiful and unusual Richardsonian Romanesque church the congregation now occupies at 475 Cranston Street was originally built for the Cranston Street Baptist Church, a white congregation formed by missionary Moses H. Bixby in 1869. New York architect Arthur Bates Jennings designed the church, which was dedicated in 1893. By 1969, the white congregation had dwindled and the church buildings were sold to neighboring Ebenezer, which had grown to be one of the largest and most active African-American congregations in the city. Reverend Carl H. Balark Jr. has led the church since 1992 and continues the tradition of strength and action. He was the first African-American to lead the Rhode Island Council of Churches. Notable speakers at the church include Jesse Jackson and Sallye Davis, who spoke in 1971 to raise funds for the legal defense of her daughter, activist Angela Davis. Mrs. Davis said at Ebenezer’s pulpit, “If Angela gets out [of jail] tomorrow, I would carry on the fight. We can’t be content until all of us are free.”

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Providence was once a city of churches. All Saints' Memorial Church is one of the last of the religious communities that grew on “Christian Hill” in the 19th century. Within a stone’s throw were the Stewart Street Baptist Church, the High Street Congregational Church, the Union Congregational Church, as well as the Second Free Will Baptist Church and Mt. Zion AME Church, two anchors of the African-American community that grew here. All Saints’ Episcopal congregation was originally formed as St. Andrew’s in 1846 but relocated here in 1868 with a new name to honor Bishop John P.K. Henshaw, the first independent Bishop of Rhode Island. Edward Tuckerman Potter's Gothic Revival design was left without a tower due to financial difficulties. The exquisite interior features elaborate woodwork and remarkable stained glass windows, including the Sanctuary Window (c. 1875) over the altar by the Henry E. Sharpe Company of New York. Today's congregation embraces the diversity of the neighborhood, including many from Providence’s strong Liberian community.

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St. Mary's is a Gothic Revival monument to the Irish history of Providence. As textile mills changed the industrial landscape of the city in the early 19th century, Irish from Ulster came to work in those mills, many just down the hill in Olneyville. Facing discrimination from Yankee Providence, the lot for St. Mary's had to be purchased through an intermediary. At the end of the Civil War, a full third of Providence's residents were native Irish. The stone church, designed by Irish-born architect James Murphy, was begun in 1864; much of the labor, including digging the foundations and cutting stone masonry, was done by the Irish congregation, coming here after a long day in the mills to donate their work to the construction of this magnificent act of faith and community. The church, consecrated in 1869, became the heart of a complex of schools and convents, but has adapted to the city’s changes. The parochial school is now owned by the city. The convent has become office space. Spanish language masses occur as well as English. A chapel is dedicated with Peruvian icons brought by the new congregants, one of many Latin American countries represented in St. Mary’s 21^st century congregation.

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Providence’s exquisite jewel box of a French neo-classical temple, the Bell Street Chapel, was built in 1875 for art dealer and engraver James Eddy after a design by storied Providence architect William R. Walker. Eddy dedicated his church “to God, to Truth, and to all that ennobles Humanity.” Eddy was a radical progressive for the time, participating in the causes of temperance, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. He rejected the organized religions of his day, but could find no one to lead a congregation according to his vision. The church remained empty until after his death in 1888. The first service was Eddy’s memorial, featuring reformer and activist Anna Garlin Spencer, who organized an independent church in accord with Eddy’s thoughts and was Rhode Island’s first female ordained minister. Spencer fought against misogyny, racism, and poverty. Among her friends were history’s greatest fighters, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. Spencer was a groundbreaker. Today’s Unitarian Universalist congregation continues the fight for social justice with Reverend Margaret Weis at its helm.

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Completed in 1892 to serve the wealthy Episcopalians of Broadway, and home for ten years to the African-American Church of the Savior, this Alpheus C. Morse-designed Romanesque Revival church has been Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church since 1940. Armenians found refuge in the United States after being driven from their homeland by the Ottoman Turkish brutal pogroms in the 1890s and Armenian Genocide of 1915. The immigrant arrivals called their new home in Providence the “Citadel” (mitchnapert) for the community’s strength and activism. The congregation donated their labor to build new altars, a new baptismal font, new pews, and to replace floors. The rich, timber-trussed hammerbeam ceiling over the nave resembles a protective ark. The commitment to faith and service remains as strong today as when they first arrived, representative of their history as the first nation to accept Christianity as its national religion in 301AD. This community gives aid and support to those in need at home, as well as to Armenians across the globe facing conflict and persecution.

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In 1885, there were fewer than 500 Italian-born in Providence; within a generation, over twenty-thousand. In Italy in 1889, Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini’s society sent missionaries to Providence and formed the Holy Ghost parish to serve the spiritual and physical needs of this growing community. Plans for this Italian Romanesque church were made in 1901 and completed in 1909. Father Flaminio Parenti, the “Shepherd of Federal Hill,” led the flock here from 1922 to 1964 and continued the beautification of the church. The work of the Scalabrinian missionaries continues today as a lay organization, the Scalabrini Dukcevich Center, which provides support and services to all those in need. At Holy Ghost, there are masses in English, Italian and Spanish. Communities of Colombians and Guatemalans have joined the congregation, breathing new life into the old traditions. Holy Ghost remains the “Mother Church” of the Italian diaspora in Rhode Island and a beautiful testament to the faith and fortitude of the community.

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In the early 1800s local Baptists established the Christian Baptist Church here at the top of Adamsville Hill; after the church closed, the building was later used as a school. Today, the buried foundation is all that remains of the building that once stood on this site.

The Christian Baptist Church's minister may have been Francisco Veray. He was the first recorded person from Portugal to live in Little Compton, anglicizing his name to "Francis Veray." He, along with his wife, daughter and grandchildren, is buried in the center plot of the cemetery adjacent to the church.

Shortly after Veray's death in 1866, it appears the church closed. The building quickly reopened as the Number Six School. Originally, the school was farther down Adamsville Hill, most likely in the small blue house that still stands on the hill's slopes today. The school had one teacher who taught grades 1-8, and it operated until 1929, when the Wilbur School opened on the Little Compton Commons.

Once it stopped functioning as a school the building housed the Bell Whist Club for a short time. It was eventually auctioned in 1930; the new owners moved it across the border into Darmouth, MA, to serve as an office for a propane business.

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There was a time when, if a bride wanted to walk up the aisle at the Old Stone Baptist Church, she had to hoist herself, gown and all, through one of the church’s back windows.

Most churches place the pulpit and the main entrance at opposite ends of their building, allowing for formal processions up a center aisle. When it was built in 1752, however, the two entrances to the Old Stone Church stood behind the pulpit, making for an awkward and subdued entrance for the bride. The solution? A ladder, a window, and a congregation willing to keep their eyes averted while the bride fixed her dress.

In the late 1950s, the church added an entrance hall opposite the pulpit. Brides at the Old Stone Church no longer climb through a window in order to make a grand entrance, but for many congregants, it’s a fond memory of one of the church’s more interesting customs.

The Old Stone Church was also known for its annual Rhode Island clambake. The church held the first clambake in 1864, and by 1875, an astonishing 4,000 people attended the event. The clambake served as a fundraiser for the church, drawing people from neighboring communities regardless of religious affiliation.

In the morning, cooks placed heaping mounds of Rhode Island clams and quahogs, along with locally-grown potatoes, onions, and corn, into a pit lined with a bed of hot rocks. The cooks alternated layers of food with moist rockweed, slowly steaming the feast for hours. The Manchester family of Little Compton were for many years a critical part of the clambake: Abe managed the event, Debbie collected tickets, and Lizzie cooked the chowder.

Crowds gathered southeast of the church behind the Pleasant View Cemetery and sat at long tables. The Old Stone Church clambake was always the social event of the season. People dressed in their finest clothes and munched on iced watermelon to cool off in the summer heat. Many local stores closed and gave employees the day off. The popular event halted during World War II due to rationing, but in recent years, the church has begun to revive the delicious tradition.

During the years that the clambakes weren't held, the church grounds became the site of an annual bazaar. Farmers bought and sold livestock, demonstrated crafts and skills, and held an antique auction on the church lawn. Reverend Bob Hollis remembers a toy table that Millie Waite arranged where a nickel would buy children the bag of their choice, with a surprise toy inside. The atmosphere was festive and exciting, with people spending days putting up booths and preparing for the festival.

Even though the church isn’t technically in Adamsville—it’s just over the line in Tiverton—for Adamsville residents, it has played a long and important role in the religious and social life of the village. After all, if your congregation is willing to put up with climbing through a window to get married, it’s clearly something special.

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More than 100 years after its founding, the Feast still begins and ends at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church. Though in recent years the religious aspects of the Feast have taken a backseat to its many secular offerings, the Feast’s four Madeiran founders held the first event at the church in 1915.

The Diocese of Fall River founded Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church in 1909 to serve New Bedford’s growing Portuguese community in the North End of the city. The ethnic church offers Portuguese and English masses, and parishioners relish its Portuguese traditions. Immaculate Conception Church was the third of the city’s three Portuguese churches. It followed Saint John the Baptist Church, the oldest Portuguese Church in North America, established in 1871 in the center of the city, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, established in 1902 on Bonney Street in the South End. The first Festas were simple gatherings on the church grounds that took place on a Sunday afternoon. Families gathered around temporary barraccas, or stands, to eat and socialize. Religious and cultural traditions from the Portuguese island of Madeira were at the heart of their celebrations. In recent years the Feast has grown into a four-day event. On its first day, a Thursday, feast organizers, or Festeiros, venerate, or worship, the Blessed Sacrament displayed in an elaborate monstrance (pedestaled case) on the altar. The Blessed Sacrament is the consecrated communion host that Catholics believe to be the real body of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, the congregation moves to the Feast grounds on nearby Madeira Field for the Benediction, or blessing, that officially opens the event.  On Sunday, the final day of the Feast, the Festeiros, their wives, and the other Club Madeirense S. S. Sacramento members gather at the Feast Grounds to march in formation to the church for a special High Mass at 10:00 AM. There the celebrant blesses them for their efforts on behalf of the Feast and for their respect for the Feast’s religious traditions.   Father Daniel Reis regrets the Feast’s change in focus over the years from religious to secular, according to the Anchor, a newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. What was once a religious procession is now just a parade without the statues of saints and other reminders of the feast’s origins. Father Reis still marches in the parade and enjoys the traditional foods the Feast has to offer, but he hopes for more. 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the Feast. There was talk of bringing back the traditional religious procession, but it did not happen. Immaculate Conception Church’s congregation is shrinking, like many Catholic churches in America. The recent closures of other churches in New Bedford is alarming, and parishioners of Immaculate Conception Church hope and pray the same does not happen to them. They are proud that they celebrate other Portuguese religious feasts in traditional ways including the Feast of Senhor da Pedra (Jesus of the Rock) and the Holy Ghost Feast, and hope to continue for many years to come.  

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