Tallmadge Church

In 1804, the Congregationalist Church authorized Reverend David Bacon to establish the town of Tallmadge, Ohio. Tallmadge was to be the center of the Congregationalist Church and its missionary efforts in the Connecticut Western Reserve. The church building was to be located in the center of town with all roads radiating outward like the sun’s rays.

A church still stands at the center of the town. Church member Lemuel Porter designed the church. Built between 1822 and 1825, the Tallmadge Church is virtually unchanged architecturally from when it was first built. The only addition to the church was a small room on the back of the church to house the pipes of the pipe organ. The original structure was forty feet wide and fifty-six feet long. The steeple is one hundred feet high, and a Greek Revival portico exists on the front of the church.

The church located at the center of the community illustrates how important religion was to the earliest settlers. It is also a design common to the New England area, a region from which came most of the Connecticut Western Reserve’s original residents. Today, the church is primarily used for weddings. No regular church services take place in the building. The Tallmadge Church is also an Ohio historic site operated by the Ohio Historical Society.