The first meetinghouse owned by the Hudson Congregational Church stood on this site and was dedicated March 1, 1820, twenty-one years after David Hudson first came to the Hudson area. Its members worshiped here until they completed their sanctuary on Aurora Street in 1865. In August 1835, church members unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that slavery is "a direct violation of the law of Almighty God." At a November 1837 prayer meeting, church member and antislavery leader John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery.
