Europeans and Africans moving into the Middle Delaware valley in the late 17th and 18th centuries professed and practiced a variety of religious faiths. In the case of the incoming European settlers, most held to some form of Protestant Christian belief, with the earliest wave of immigrants being dominated by English Quakers. Typically, worshippers first met in private homes, and then within a few years lands were being set aside for churches and meetinghouses, cemeteries and burial plots.
A handful of Quaker meetinghouses were built in the area prior to 1700, with the Trenton meetinghouse finally being erected in 1739. By the middle of the 18th century there were also several well-established Presbyterian and Episcopalian congregations. Presbyterian churches were in existence in present-day Lawrenceville, Pennington and Ewing by the second decade of the 18th century. Trenton's first church of this denomination was built in 1726. the original St. Michael's Church on North Warren Street, the first Episcopalian house of worship in Trenton was erected in 1747-48 to replace an earlier house of worship in Ewing that dated from 1704-05.
In the second half of the 18th century both the Methodist and Baptist denominations took root in Trenton. The first Methodist church in New Jersey was erected in Trenton in 1773 on South Broad Street. While a Baptist congregation began to organize in the city soon after the Revolutionary War. Catholicism began to be openly practiced soon after 1800 and the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church incorporated in 1811 as the first African-American religious organization in Trenton.
Links to learn more - Quaker Meetinghouse, Trenton; St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Trenton
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