The "Missionary Society of Connecticut" celebrated its two hundredth anniversary in 1998. In 1798, members of the General Association of Congregational Clergy met in Hebron to meet the growing need for churches and pastors of Congregational persuasion in remote areas. Many people were moving from Connecticut to Vermont, New York, and the New Connecticut Western Reserve which is now part of Ohio. Jonathan Edwards, Jr., Nathan Perkins, and Samuel Nott were the first missionaries of this new mission enterprise to meet the spiritual needs of these migrants. Also, the need for new churches within our state was growing and in the middle of the nineteenth century, a bi-lingual ministry was started to work with immigrant peoples settling in Connecticut. Those helped by the Missionary Society included German, Danish, Italian, Armenian, Assyrian, French, Hungarian, Finish, and Spanish speaking peoples, but the most numerous were those of Swedish background.
It was in 1883 that Rev. C. J. Erixon, a home missionary for the Congregational Church, began to preach to fifteen Swedish immigrants in Hartford. By 1885, this group became known as the Swedish Evangelical Free Church with a membership of sixteen. In 1889, L. W. A. Bjorkman became the first permanent pastor and on October 25th, our birthday, we were recognized as a Congregational Church and a part of the Hartford Association of Congregational Churches. We also took on a new name, Swedish Evangelical Zion Church. Because of the ethnic background of the members, there was the beginning a shift in denominational interest to the Evangelical Covenant Church which, at the time, was largely a Swedish denomination. In 1890, our church became part of the Eastern Missionary Association (now the East Coast Conference) which is the local branch of the Evangelical Covenant Church. We joined the denomination itself in 1935 and in 1938 became the Covenant Congregational Church of Hartford. However, we still have an affiliation at the local level with the Congregational Church (now the United Church of Christ).
From 1892 through 1960, our church home was at the corner of Russ and Hungerford Streets in Hartford. In 1960, we moved to West Hartford where most of our members resided and which had a greater growth potential. We became the Covenant Congregational Church of West Hartford.
A Christ centered community church proclaiming the Gospel is how one would describe our church. Our membership now comes from many backgrounds. Within our congregation there is a sense of unity in the cause of serving Christ in the community and worldwide.
