One of the Finest Colonial Interiors in Rhode Island
BUILT: 1730
BARNEY STREET
Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, ca. 1890s
The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House (also commonly known as the Sabbatarian Meeting House), now located at 82 Touro Street as part of the Newport Historical Society Richard I. Burnham Resource Center, was originally constructed to house an expanding congregation of Seventh Day Baptists.[1] It was built from 1729 to 1730 at its original location at the intersection of Spring and Barney Streets. The congregation that used this meeting house had originally split from the First Baptist congregation in 1671 because of its belief that Christians should worship on the seventh day of the week (Saturday) instead of the first (Sunday) and because of its stronger theological emphasis on the Old Testament.[2] This was the first organized group of Seventh Day Baptists in North America and was made possible by early Rhode Island’s relatively high degree of religious tolerance compared to neighboring colonies like Massachusetts and Connecticut, from which many early Baptists had fled due to religiously motivated persecution. The congregation was initially small, but grew in numbers as it gained converts from other Baptist denominations, including people who fled to Newport in the 1670s during a period of violent conflict between English colonists and Indigenous groups.[3] The Seventh Day Baptists are thought to have initially worshipped in a building located somewhere near Green End before building a meeting house on Barney Street between 1706 and 1712, which they later tore down during the construction of the current meeting house.[4] The Seventh Day Baptists also alternated between having services in Newport and in Westerly before growing large enough to formally split into two groups in 1708.[5]
The meeting house itself was constructed with a deliberately plain exterior in keeping with the style of Dissenting Protestant groups of the time period, though the ornate interior may hint at some design influence from more elaborate Anglican churches.[6] The interior has a distinctive “wine glass” pulpit and finely carved balusters leading up to the pulpit and the balcony. These architectural features, which bear a striking similarity to those of Newport’s Trinity Church and may even have been carved with the same tools, indicate that the two buildings were likely designed by the same person, Richard Munday.[7] The walls were originally red-stained wood before being painted green in 1773.[8] The wooden tablets that currently hang above the pulpit were added in the same year and emphasize the centrality of the Ten Commandments to Sabbatarian worship. The Seventh Day Baptists would have worshipped in box pews that were located on the ground floor as well as on the upper balcony, where some congregants carved their initials and nautical scenes during services. The pews no longer exist in their original form but were made into the wainscotting on the walls of the building during an 1884 renovation.[9]
The congregation itself was mostly white, but included several enslaved and later freed Black and Indigenous members. These included Scipio Tanner, who was enslaved by Deacon John Tanner until John’s death in 1785, and Arthur Tikey, whose wife and children were also baptized into the Sabbatarian church and who became a prominent leader in the Free African Union Society after his manumission.[10] An Indigenous man of unknown origin known as Jepheth (also Japeth or Jeptha) may have been the first Indigenous person to be baptized in Rhode Island in 1675, though records are inconclusive.[11] Some other notable figures who worshipped in the meeting house are Stephen Mumford, the first known Seventh Day Baptist in North America and first owner of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, William Hiscox, the congregation’s first pastor, and Tacy and Samuel Hubbard, who were instrumental in promoting their faith in the region.
Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House pulpit. Photo by Shannon Hammond.
The meeting house was spared the damage that other houses of worship suffered during the revolutionary-era British occupation of Newport, during which the British army seized many other public buildings and religious spaces. Multiple legends exist to explain why this structure was left unharmed when many others were not. The most common ones are that the British did not want to harm a decorative crown that once hung in the building, the design above the pulpit that could be seen to resemble the British flag, or the presence of the Ten Commandments on the wall.[12] These claims have not been verified by primary source documents and are probably spurious. It may be more likely that prominent members of the congregation were sympathetic to the British occupation, but this has not been definitively proven either.
Regardless, even if it did not damage the meeting house, the period of British occupation harmed the Newport congregation and was a major factor for its decline in the early 19th century, as many residents of Newport chose to flee inland or move west during the period of post-war economic stagnation. The War of 1812 further disrupted Newport’s shipping industry and intensified the existing negative economic trends. Internally, the congregation also failed to evangelize and was often eager to officially censure or expel congregants for activities such as drinking or working on the Sabbath.[13] The official records of the Newport Seventh Day Baptist congregation end in 1839, and the regular meeting itself also discontinued at around this time. The Seventh Day Baptists only used the building on occasion after this period.
The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House remained in use despite the dispersal of its original congregants. In 1840, the Fourth Baptist Church made an agreement with the Seventh Day Baptists to rent the meeting house for $35 a year for its own services, as long as it refrained from using the building on Saturdays.[14] Later on, Shiloh Baptist Church used the meeting house from 1864 to 1869.[15] This Black congregation had grown too large to continue hosting its services in private homes and needed a place to worship while a more permanent location was under construction. After Shiloh Baptist Church moved out to a permanent location at the intersection of School and Mary Streets,[16] the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House was left largely empty and entered a state of disrepair. The roof, the sills, the floor frame, and the shingles on the exterior of the building rotted and caused the building’s walls to sag and bulge.[17]
The meeting house was rescued in 1884 when it was purchased from the Seventh Day Baptists by the Newport Historical Society, which desperately needed a permanent space in which to display its collection and host events during a period of declining membership and local enthusiasm. The Society had been struggling to attract members because it had no consistent space in which to host meetings and had to rely on the generosity of institutions like the Redwood Library in order to conduct its business. The Society hired local architect and restorer of colonial buildings George C. Mason Jr. to lead restoration efforts, which included replacing much of the decaying roof and stabilizing the overall structure.[18] The historical society dedicated and opened the building as a public exhibition space on November 10, 1884 after the repairs.
Color postcard of the interior of the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House when it served as the Newport Historical Society’s museum. 2009.3.5, Collection of the Newport Historical Society.
Concerns quickly rose among the Newport Historical Society’s membership about the newly renovated meeting house becoming a potential fire risk as an aged, completely wooden structure that was within a dangerously short distance to a smithy that could let off sparks. Multiple accounts of the renovation note that it was difficult for the restorers to replace the exterior shingles because of the tight squeeze required to get between the two buildings.[19] In order to resolve this issue, the society purchased a lot on nearby Touro Street in 1886 and moved the meeting house there a year later. In 1889, the NHS further modified the building by expanding it for the short-lived Newport Natural History Museum.[20]
These changes to the meeting house did not completely allay the preexisting concerns about fire and a lack of space, however. The Newport Historical Society added further research and collections storage space in 1902. The Newport Natural History Museum was removed in 1915 during a major expansion that involved shifting the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House to the back of the Touro Street Lot and encasing its wooden exterior in brick and slate in an attempt at fireproofing. This was also when the three story structure that consists of the majority of the modern-day Newport Historical Society Richard I. Burnham Resource Center was attached to the meeting house. The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House is now considered part of this Resource Center.
While the most dramatic modifications to the meeting house occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more work has been done since to maintain the structure. The Newport Historical Society has performed several structural restorations aimed at stabilizing the meeting house in addition to those designed to restore the historical character of the building. A 1978 paint analysis discovered that the white coat of paint then on the interior of the meeting house did not reflect the original pale green.[21] A comprehensive restoration of the meeting house in 2009 that was aimed at recreating its historical appearance and further preserving the structure painted the interior green once more.[22] The Resource Center also further expanded in 2014, adding a new entrance area, increased storage space for collections, and improved climate control. The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House continues to be used as an exhibition and event space to this day.
Rent the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House for your next event.
Research by Bianca Scialabba, 2024 Buchanan-Burnham Summer Scholar in Public History.
[1] VOL.1400, Seventh Day Baptist Church Records, 76.
[2] The Seventh-day Baptist Memorial 1, no. 1 (January 1852): 30-32.
[3] This conflict is commonly known as King Philip’s War or Metacomet’s War. The Seventh-day Baptist Memorial 1, no. 2 (April 1852): 76, 84-85.
[4] Mrs. R. Sherman [Gertrude Ehrhardt] Elliot, “The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House,” Newport History, no. 73 (January 1930): 267-268; VOL.1400, Seventh Day Baptist Church Records, 76.
[5] The Seventh-day Baptist Memorial 1, no. 4 (October 1852): 180.
[6] Janet Thorngate, Baptists in Early North America Volume III: Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press; Janesville, WI: The Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, 2017), lxxxiv-lxxxv.
[7] George C. Mason Jr., “The Seventh Day Baptist Church at Newport, R.I.”, The American Architect and Building News 18, no. 488 (May 2, 1885): 210-211.
[8] David McLaren Hart and Associates, 1978; VOL.1400, Seventh Day Baptist Church Records, 136.
[9] George C. Mason Jr., “The Seventh Day Baptist Church at Newport, R.I.”, The American Architect and Building News 18, no. 488 (May 2, 1885): 210-211.
[10] Zoe Hume, “Scipio Tanner,” Newport Historical Society Collections Online, Newport Historical Society, https://collections.newporthistory.org/People/Story/story/18323; Kaela Bleho, “Arthur Tikey,” Newport Historical Society Collections Online, Newport Historical Society, https://collections.newporthistory.org/People/Story/story/18322.
[11] Janet Thorngate, Baptists in Early North America Volume III: Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press; Janesville, WI: The Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, 2017), 35-36.
[12] Edith May Tilley, “The Newport Historical Society in its Earlier Days,” Newport History, no. 12 (April 1914): 8.
[13] Don A. Sanford, “Entering into Covenant: The History of Seventh Day Baptists in Newport,” Newport History 66, no. 226 (Summer 1994): 21.
[14] VOL.805, Fourth Baptist Church Records [unpaginated].
[15] Henry N. Jeter, Historical Sketch of the Shiloh Baptist Church at Newport, R.I. and the Pastors Who Have Served (Newport, R.I.: B.W. Pearce), 7-12.
[16] Henry N. Jeter, Historical Sketch of the Shiloh Baptist Church at Newport, R.I. and the Pastors Who Have Served (Newport, R.I.: B.W. Pearce), 11.
[17] George C. Mason Jr., “The Seventh Day Baptist Church at Newport, R.I.”, The American Architect and Building News 18, no. 488 (May 2, 1885): 210-211; Edith May Tilley, “The Newport Historical Society in its Earlier Days,” Newport History, no. 12 (April 1914): 8-10.
[18] George C. Mason Jr., “The Seventh Day Baptist Church at Newport, R.I.”, The American Architect and Building News 18, no. 488 (May 2, 1885): 210-211.
[19] George C. Mason Jr., “The Seventh Day Baptist Church at Newport, R.I.”, The American Architect and Building News 18, no. 488 (May 2, 1885): 210-211; Edith May Tilley, “The Newport Historical Society in its Earlier Days,” Newport History, no. 12 (April 1914): 10.
[20] M. Joan Youngken, “Our Cabinet of Curiosities: The Early Collections of the Newport Historical Society,” Newport History 66, no. 228 (Winter 1995): 33.
[21] David McLaren Hart and Associates, 1978.
[22] NHS Institutional Files, File Cabinet 13, Drawer 2.