Union Congregational Church

The church is located directly across from Amesbury’s Alliance Park, where the 38-gun Frigate Alliance was launched in April 1778.  

Legend has it that the church was designed by area ship-yard owners and constructed by their crews in the slack season, crews from the same yards that build the Alliance. Virtually identical to the 1834 East Parish Church in Salisbury Square, the design was most likely taken from one of the architectural pattern books of the day, possibly an Asher Benjamin book. The church exhibits a number of Greek Revival details, combined with forms carried over from the Federal period. The front windows are Palladian in style, but framed with Greek Revival pilaster detail.

Equally significant is the church bell, cast at the Holbrook Bell Factory in what is now Millis, MA, and hung on Dec. 12^th 1851. George Holbrook had learned his trade as an apprentice to Paul Revere.  Holbrook’s son, George Hayden Holbrook, a famous musician, developed a method of casting bells with musical tones.  The Union Church Bell,  ringing  in B Flat, is an early version of ten thousand bells cast over  50 years. Changing them from noisy machines to musical instruments made G. H. Holbrook the foremost bell maker in America.