A Short History of Trinity Lime Rock

In Trinity’s 150+ years we’ve seen good, even great  times — and some that were a bit of a trial.  If today’s Trinity mirrors our past, perhaps understanding both helps . 

Before Trinity

In the 1800’s, Lime Rock (and the whole Upper Housatonic Valley) was a much different place than the picturesque, lush green landscape it is today. Back then, there was a thriving iron industry that had begun in Lime Rock in the 1730s. When Trinity was founded, there were two blast furnaces and several forges and foundries right in Lime Rock village.  Lime Rock was the headquarters of the Barnum  Richardson Company, a leader in production of railroad car wheels at a time when the railroad industry held the allure of artificial intelligence today.  Barnum Richardson was at the center of the area industry and the headquarters of an corporate entity with presences in Buffalo, Chicago, West Virginia, Michigan, St. Louis, Newark (NJ), New York City, and elsewhere.

Trinity’s Beginnings

By 1873, when the Barnum and Richardson families decided that Lime Rock needed an Episcopal church, there were already Episcopal parishes in Sharon, Salisbury, and North Canaan.  With the enthusiastic backing and financial support of US Senator William H. Barnum, the CEO of  Barnum Richardson — and perhaps even more important, Mrs. Barnum, the decision was made to have an Episcopal parish in Lime Rock.  The Richardson family enthusiastically jumped in.  Trinity was the result.

U.S. Senator William H. Barnum

Architect  Henry Martyn Congdon of New York City, an important transitional figure between Gothic Revival and subsequent phases of church architecture, was retained.

Architect Henry M. Congdon 

An acre of land was obtained from the Ensign family, stone from I. N. Bartram’s quarry on Sharon Mountain was used (Bartram was also the contractor for the masonry), and work began on what initially may have been initially conceived as a mission of St. John’s Church in Salisbury, but which almost immediately was re-conceived as an independent parish.

Interestingly, Trinity’s building was completed before there was a formally recognized congregation to worship in it.  Indeed, Trinity has often been called “The Church that Iron Built” an accurate summation of how our parish came into being.

From the first, the Barnums intended Trinity to be a parish for all, regardless of social station, and importantly, an organization that helped the Lime Rock community.  Today we hear of  the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age of American history — and both Barnum and his partner and brother-in-law Leonard Richardson can be categorized as such — but Barnum in particular belonged to a subset of that class that felt strongly called to social justice, at least for his workers and their families.  The incorporators of Trinity were evidence of this.  They ranged from a US Senator to a handyman in terms of occupation.  Tantalizing clues regarding the founding of Trinity as a “company church,” suggesting it was viewed by its founders as a social experiment to offer workers and their families a supportive community in which to live and work continue to emerge.  We know, for example, that William H. Barnum was a member of the predecessor organization of the American Social Sciences Association in 1880 — certainly not a typical membership  for a robber baron. 

Regardless of the source of this attribute of Trinity, welcoming and accepting people regardless of who they were became part of Trinity’s DNA.  It still is today. Today, Trinity — Barnum Richardson’s “company church” — is the only surviving part of the historic iron industry that is still operating and is still in its original building.  You can learn more about the local iron industry at the website of the Friends of Beckley Furnace, a group working to preserve and interpret one Barnum Richardson blast furnace.  

After the iron industry

When the  iron industry collapsed and vanished in the years following World War I, hard times came to Lime Rock and to Trinity. The village became something of a ghost town.  For half a century Trinity’s survival was tenuous.  The parish was served by  clergy borrowed from St. John’s, from the former Christ Church in Canaan, and from the Salisbury School during these difficult years.  Even in those years, Trinity made it a point to aid the local community where it could.

As the area rebounded, so did Trinity. Trinity’s physical plant began to expand with the addition of a parish hall in the early 1960s. Eventually seven  adjacent acres were purchased, and around 2000 an additional wing was added, creating the Trinity we know today.  At the same time, Trinity’s geographic spread began. Today our active parishioners and adherents include people living in no fewer than six states and on three continents.  We welcome our physically remote parishioners via our internet presence.

Trinity today

Trinity was one of the first parishes in the Diocese of Connecticut to have a woman on the Vestry and first to have a man on the Altar Guild. We were the first Connecticut parish to have had three sequential woman Rectors.  One thing has been constant: the spirit of helping others. We recently celebrated our 150th birthday. 

For the most current history of Trinity, you might want to review Annual Reports for the past few years.  You can find them HERE.

To date, that’s  the history of Trinity Lime Rock!  We invite you to become a part of Trinity’s present  and future — and eventually, like all of us, part of Trinity’s history!  A parishioner has recently written a comprehensive history of Trinity, called Trinity Lime Rock in Context – a History, available from Amazon.com