Religious Life

With an unbroken Puritan-Congregational heritage stretching back to origins of the colony, religious beliefs, activities, and institutions played a central role in the lives of early Sharon residents. No new town could obtain independent legal status without establishing a church. Inhabitants were required to set aside land for support of a church and minister, pay taxes for their annual upkeep, attend weekly meetings, and submit to church discipline.

Erecting a meetinghouse to accommodate church services and other public gatherings constituted the largest and often most contentious construction effort undertaken in many towns. Sharon's first meeting house of 1743, built of logs, stood somewhere near the present clock tower. It was replaced in 1766 by a larger, more finished structure located in the middle of the upper Green.

The great geographic extent of the town, coupled with the difficulty associated with traversing Sharon Mountain in the winter, created a need for two churches. Early in his ministry Reverend Smith began holding worship meetings in the Ellsworth area, a practice that continued for nearly 50 years. The home of Timothy St. John on Cornwall Bridge Road was the site of many of these gatherings, drawing parishioners from the Ellsworth and Sharon Mountain neighborhoods. In May 1800 a new ecclesiastical society was incorporated, and a new church organized in 1802. Daniel Parker served as the first minister.

From the first days of settlement, Sharon had been home to several Anglican families. In 1754 they formed the town's first Episcopal Society and soon built a small stuccoed church on the upper Green. They were led by Rev. Ebenezer Dibble, who was succeeded by Thomas Davies and Solomon Palmer. Dibble was a missionary of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Leading Sharon churchmen included Joel Harvey, Job Gould, Elnathan Goodrich, John Pennoyer, Simeon Rowley, Samuel Hitchcock, and Solomon Goodrich. The congregation consisted of perhaps 19 communicants and 20 families. After the Revolutionary War the Anglican church (which had suffered financial loss and loss of congregants in the wartime period) experienced rebirth. The enthusiasm was evident in Sharon when in 1809 Sharon's Episcopalians, about 20 families in all, reorganized and began planning to erect a new sanctuary. Work on the present church began in 1812. The interior work was completed in 1819, and the church was dedicated in November of that year by Bishop Brownell.

Just across the border in New York the Reverend Ebenezer Knibloe led the Round Top Chapel where several strands of Protestant believers gathered for services. Knibloe, who lived on the Connecticut side of the border, preached for 25 years, was known as a "sound, sensible, sincere man." The first Methodist meeting house was erected on Caulkinstown Road circa 1808, and an imposing red brick church arose at the north end of the green in 1835. The custom of summer camp meeting began in Sharon in 1805. Methodists in Ellsworth originally gathered in the home of Joshua Millard, a native of nearby Cornwall.

Irish Catholic immigrants came to Sharon to work in the iron industry in the 1840s. Catholic mass was celebrated in Sharon as early as 1845-50 at the home of James and Bridget Dunning on Cornwall Bridge Road. Services were held in other houses, too, as well as a paint store, school, tannery, and town hall. The first permanent sanctuary, the Little Church in the Valley, was erected in 1884, followed by the present structure (St. Bernard's) in 1915.