The Ecclesiastical Society of Northfield was incorporated at the session of the General Assembly, October 1794. The name was officially changed to the Congregational Society of Northfield in 1859. The Society was organized at the house of William Washburn at a meeting on January 1, 1795, with fourteen enrolled members. Later in the year it was voted to adopt a plan for a meeting house that would be fifty feet by thirty-eight feet. The building was commenced in 1796, but not completed for use until 1803. It stood on the top of Northfield Hill. The first pastor of the Society was Rev. Joseph Eleazur Camp, who had helped organize the Congregational Church in Northfield. He continued in that office for more than forty yeras. In his early years in Northfield Rev. Camp not only served the Congregational Church, but also the Eposcopal Church. The Society was endowed through a trust fund of $10,000 received from the estate of Asa Hopkins who died in 1838. He lived on the East Hill, where he began at a very early date the manufacture of wooden clocks. He later began the manufacture of flute at Fluteville, and finally removed to New Haven where he again manufactured clocks. By the bequest of William L. Gilbert of Winsted, a native of Northfield who died in 1890, the Society received the sum of $4,000 for a parsonage, to include a room for a free library, for which the further sum of $8,000 was given. The building was completed in 1896.

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