I. THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH [1841-1854]
Thatcher Blake, one of Rockford's first two residents of European ancestry was a Unitarian from New England, and other Unitarians came to settle from the same region. In the early years of the community they were delighted to gather on those occasions when a minister of liberal religious persuasion passed through. On February 13, 1841, when Rockford was only 7 years old, several pioneer residents filed a Declaration of Intention with the county recorder to form the Rockford Unitarian Society. Richard Montague, Isaac Cunningham, Ephraim Wyman, Frances Burnap, and James Wright were named as Trustees.

Also in 1841, a Universalist Church was organized on the East side of the Rock River. Daniel Shaw Haight, a Universalist, had moved to Rockford in 1835 - the East Side s first settler. The Rev. Seth Barnes, a young Universalist minister who was committed to the extension of Universalism in the West, moved to Rockford early in April, 1841 and on April 24, a meeting was held at which the Universalist Church was created. Haight donated land, and on July 22, 1841, a cornerstone was laid for the Universalist Church. Seth Barnes started a new Universalist newspaper, The Better Covenant, and Rockford, for a brief period, became a center for Universalism. Barnes became more interested in publishing than ministry, and he left Rockford for Chicago in 1843, having married a Rockford Universalist. The church was never completed. The names of Rockford Universalists began to appear on the lists of Unitarians.

The Rev. Joseph Harrington, a Unitarian minister who visited occasionally to preach to the Unitarians beginning in 1841, came out to Rockford from Chicago in 1843 to conduct a series of revival meetings about the doctrines of liberal religion, and there was a spurt toward organizing. Some attempts were made to purchase the incomplete Universalist Church - one obstacle may have been the rivalry between Thatcher Blake on the West Side and Daniel Haight on the West Side, and the sale did not take place.

In 1843, an agent of the American Unitarian Association was sent to survey Belvidere as a possible site for a Western Theological School. The minister, who signed his reports B.F. (and has not been further identified), spent three weeks in Rockford and attested to its potential for Unitarianism,. He urged the building of a church.

In the subsequent years, sporadic services were held in the court house. In 1849, with a $250 loan from the American Unitarian Association, the group purchased a building, which it moved to a lot at South Church and Elm Streets, in which The Rev. Herman Snow preached two Sundays a month, alternating Sundays with the Unitarian Church in Belvidere. Mr. Snow's health failed but he urged the sending of a replacement, and was succeeded by The Rev. John Winsor in 1850. In the fourth year of his ministry, when the congregation numbered 100, the construction of a new church was undertaken. Mr. Winsor went East to collect money pledged by congregations there to support the new building, and never returned. (It is not suggested that he pocketed the money.)