History
Free thinkers and adventurous entrepreneurs migrated to Baltimore after the War of 1812 was finally stalemated and trade on the Atlantic was normalized. These innovators formed a religious community known as the First Independent Church of Baltimore in 1817, commissioned and erected a Sanctuary designed by a world class architect Maximilian Godefroy in 1818, and installed their first minister in 1819. Rev. Jared Sparks used his time in Maryland to become chaplain to the US House of Representatives and to collect the writings of George Washington, which he later published when he became a professor of Harvard College. In the 1870s, the church began to engage in community labors and built a Parish Hall to serve the community. In the 20th century, they changed their name to First Unitarian, and in the 1930s they merged with Second Universalist to become the church we are today. We are