Factors Influencing the Founding of Copper Hill Church
We don’t know the reason Seth Griffin, Aristarchus Griffin, Calvin Gillet and their wives founded the church in 1816, but we do know some of the things that were going on at the time. The first one is political. In 1815, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists, and members of other dissident denominations to the established Congregationalist church, combined with the Democratic-Republican party to form the Toleration Party . In 1816, they held a convention and ran a slate of candidates. In 1817, they took control of the state Assembly (lower house), and elected Oliver Wolcott, Jr as Governor. This lead to the Connecticut constitution of 1818 where any man with property could vote. By 1816 many churches were forming because they knew they would be able to vote soon.
The second circumstance was weather. In Copper Hill 1816 was the year with no summer. There was frost here every month and only about 10% of the crops were harvested. (http://connecticuthistory.org/eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death-1816-the-year-without-a-summer/). It was a cold period due to sun spots, but the dust from Mount Tambora that erupted in early April of 1815 made for a very cold summer across New England, northern Europe and northern China. People did not understand this climate change. Many looked up to God for help. Many moved to western New York and Ohio for better weather. – Submitted by Robert Loomis
The following was submitted by Pastor Kelvin Jones
Incidentally, Bishop Francis Asbury, one of the founders of American Methodism and the person responsible for the itinerant system of circuit riding preachers that facilitated the founding of churches like ours, died on March 31, 1816.
A third factor: the year 1816 was the fiftieth anniversary of Methodism in America. Philip Embury began preaching in NYC in 1766, a work which resulted in the John St. Church which dates from that year. Did that anniversary influence the Methodist circuit rider, Rev. Billy Hibbard, of the Granville MA circuit to journey down to Copper Hill and found our church?
A fourth possible factor: the year 1815 had been a big year of revival in the local Turkey Hills Congregational church now East Granby Congregational. The East Granby history book records that Turkey Hills was one of the Congregational Societies “favored with special showers of grace.” (East Granby, the Evolution of a Connecticut Town by Mary Jane Springman and Betty Finnell Guinan p. 117) The ministry of evangelist Asahel Nettleton had an amazing effect. The historian further notes that 33 people joined the East Granby church during that year of revival in 1815. Could it be that that season of spiritual refreshing, that pouring out of God’s grace upon the Town of East Granby was also instrumental in creating fertile spiritual ground for the coming of the Methodist circuit rider, Rev. Billy Hibbard , of the Granville MA circuit, who influenced Seth and Mary Griffin, Aristarchus and Jael Griffin, and Calvin and Thankful Gillett to found Copper Hill Methodist Church in 1816?
We may never know the answers to these questions but perhaps it is helpful to ponder how God may have orchestrated providential circumstances to bring about the founding of our church.