Noah Alden, born May 31, 1725, in Middleborough, Massachusetts, was the second pastor of the Baptist Church in Bellingham, the youngest of twelve children of John and Hannah White Alden, and a great-grandson of John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth. Converted at sixteen during the Great Awakening, he married Joanna Vaughn in 1744, moved with her to Stafford, Connecticut, in 1748, embraced Baptist principles through study, and was baptized into the Baptist Church in Tolland in July 1754 by Shubal Stearns. After Stearns and his company went south, Alden made publick his call to the ministry, assumed care of the church, and was ordained on June 5, 1755. When the Tolland church disbanded ten years later, he was asked to preach to believers in Bellingham and was installed there as pastor on November 12, 1766, serving faithfully for thirty-one years as a laborious itinerant and distinguished statesman. In 1767, when the church became one of four constituent members of the Warren Association, he was chosen its first moderator and also served on its grievance committee, which aided persecuted Baptists of New England. He represented Bellingham in the Massachusetts convention of 1779 to help frame a state constitution and in 1788 served in the convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States. Alden also assisted in ordaining Elnathan Wight, first pastor of this church, ordained Ebenezer Smith of Ashfield, and through itinerant preaching in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1763, was blessed to the conversion of Biel Ledoyt, who later became a useful Baptist pastor and leader. Aaron Leland, who planted many churches in Vermont and later served for a time as that state's lieutenant governor, was licensed to preach by the Bellingham Baptist Church in 1786 and ordained to the ministry by his father-in-law and pastor, Noah Alden. In June 1774, Alden baptized John Leland, who later helped secure the First Amendment to the Constitution. Alden and his wife had ten children; he died on May 5, 1797, and was buried in the Center Cemetery of Bellingham.