The Old First Church of Bennington, organized on December 3, 1762, is the oldest church within the present limits of Vermont. Bennington’s first meeting house was a place where residents prayed for assistance against the oppressive measures of New York and the power of King George, and where they returned to give thanks after the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the Battle of Bennington, and Burgoyne’s surrender. The Legislature of Vermont met there on eight separate occasions, and laws for carrying on the government of the sovereign state were enacted there on February 11, 1779. A convention in Bennington on January 10, 1791, with one delegate from each town, ratified the Constitution of the United States by the signatures of 105 of 109 delegates, preparing the way for Vermont’s admission to the Union as the first state after the Original Thirteen. The burial ground surrounding the church is the first and oldest cemetery in the state and contains the remains of five Vermont governors, seventy-five Revolutionary soldiers, the author of Vermont’s Declaration of Independence, the founder of the Vermont Gazette, patriots who fell at the Battle of Bennington, Hessian prisoners who died of wounds after the first meeting house was converted into a temporary hospital, and many others who labored for Vermont’s stability and prosperity.