The Community Baptist Church is Historic, but not for its Architecture!
The church, established as Bethel AME Mission in 1922, has been the center of New Canaan's Black community since its founding. This community formed in New Canaan as a result of the Great Migration (1910-1870). As described by the National Archives, the Great Migration was “one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states roughly from the 1910s until the 1970s. The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow.”[i] Prior to the Great Migration, Black people had been a very small percentage of inland New Canaan’s population, diminishing in the mid-nineteenth century from .009% percent to .001% of total residents between 1850 and 1860 as recorded by the census. New Canaan’s late nineteenth century evolution into a fashionable retreat and suburb created a new labor market for domestic workers as house- and groundskeepers that was initially filled by European immigrants. World War I’s interruption of European immigration made possible the first wave of the Great Migration, opening employment opportunities to southern migrants for work in northern factories and estates. The church founders, Rev. Cora E. Scott (1879-1958) and Mary Cantor (1875-1943) and all of the early members of the congregation documented to date[ii] were born in the rural south and new to New Canaan in the early twentieth century.
The event that prompted Scott and Cantor’s migration to New Canaan was Scott’s chance encounter with Marjory Breuchaud when the women met while working at a Red Cross Canteen in Washington during World War I. The women-operated canteens were established along both the front battlefield lines in France and domestically along rail lines between late summer 1918 and late summer 1919 to serve enlisted soldiers and sailors with meals and medical support. As observed in one contemporary African-American newspaper, the domestic canteens offered an unusual opportunity for Blacks and Whites to socially interact. “When soldier boys go from Camp Meade to Camp Merrett, N.J. or Newport News, Va., they get hungry as only travelers with no lunch can get hungry. Then the train stops at some station, and the men ordered out by companies. They stretch their legs and march past counters where they get sandwiches and cocoa, chocolate, cigars and cigarettes free. This is the work of the colored and white women of the American Red Cross Canteen. Since the movement of troop trains is not made public their work is also of a secret nature, showing that the government trusts women to keep its secrets where some men would not. Just as the Red Cross nurses make no social distinction in serving the sick, canteen workers feed black and white alike and do it with a smile.”[iii]
The church also marks an important story of a circle of reform-minded White residents interested in issues of civil rights and integration who understood the challenges the migrants faced and actively assisted them by raising funds and cultural awareness within the established community. Of particular note was William H. Baldwin III (1891-1980), a New Canaan resident who served as treasurer of the church building committee that reached out to the greater community to support the project. Outside New Canaan, Baldwin served as a trustee of the National Urban League (1915-1980) and Fisk University beginning in 1922 where he raised the first $1 million endowment for a black southern college in the U.S. Baldwin followed in his parents’ footsteps, both of whom spent their last years in New Canaan. Baldwin’s mother, Ruth Standish Baldwin (1865-1934), who also aided the project, was a prominent activist in many progressive causes who co-founded the National Urban League to assist migrants integrate the industrial workforce and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women to improve working conditions in domestic service.[iv] Together with her husband William H. Baldwin Jr. Ruth Baldwin was a friend of Booker T. Washington and a major financial supporter of Tuskegee Institute. The eulogy at her funeral was given in New Canaan by Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church of New York and early White trustee of the NAACP. The Baldwin family helped coordinate a benefit concert of Negro spirituals for the church in 1928 performed by the noted composer, arranger and singer Harry Thacker Burleigh who introduced Antonin Dvorak to little known traditional spirituals and work tunes that he used in his New World Symphony.
New Canaan’s Bethel AME Church/Community Baptist Church evolved beyond a religious center into the social center for New Canaan’s Black residents during Rev. Scott’s pastorship. It was the meeting place for the local New Canaan chapter of the NAACP founded in 1944 by Lucas Rilent Griggs (1878-1970), an active member of Bethel AME and later the Community Baptist Church. This chapter worked locally to combat local discrimination in housing, education and employment, and sent members to Washington for the 1963 march in solidarity with the killing of the Birmingham school children and in 1968 “in shock and sorrow” over the assassination of Dr. King. By 1975, New Canaan’s NAACP membership reached 650 Whites and Blacks and was the largest chapter in CT.
The denominational change appears to have been factored by two administrative issues. AME congregations were subject to governance by bishops with discretion to relocate clergy. In a story on the church’s history, the Stamford Advocate reported that “a ‘misunderstanding’ between Cantor and the bishop who apparently wanted to transfer her from the church she helped found resulted in the church becoming Baptist and taking the name it holds today.”[v] Additionally AME policy in 1941 prohibited ordaining women as pastors, and Cora Scott and Mary Cantor had reached their highest status as evangelists, equivalent to male deacons, who were allowed to preach but were prevented from leading services and pastoring. Churches within the Northern Baptist Convention were independent of centralized governance and although not yet the norm, did not restrict ordaining women as pastors.[vi]
Select Research Materials
1. Rev. Cora Scott on founding of church
Mrs. Cora Scott, “For the African American Church,” Part 1: Canaan Parish (1733—1933) Being the Story of the Congregational Church of New Canaan, Connecticut as told by the observance of its Two Hundredth Anniversary, June 20 to December 20, 1933. New Canaan Advertiser, New Canaan, CT January, 1935, pp/ 105-06
New Canaan A. M. E. Mission was organized June 30, 1922, by Rev. E. W. Thompson with seven members, at the residence of Mrs. Lena Davis on Seminary Street. In May, 1923, the Mission was received into the New England Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, by Bishop W. H. Heard. In 1926 Cora Scott and Mary Canter were appointed by the Bishop as Evangelists in charge. For eight years we worshipped in Raymond Hall without payment of rent, through the kindness of the Raymond Estate of the Congregational Church, and this enabled us to save our little mite, with which we later purchased a lot on Baldwin Avenue, 72x140 feet, for $1,400. After paying off this debt, then being incorporated as Bethel A. M. E. Church, we began to struggle for a little church edifice. We drew a note for $2,500 from the New Canaan Savings Bank, through the recommendation of Mrs. M. R. Breuchaud, Mr. George Yuengling, Mr. J. D. Higgins and Mr. John Brotherhood. This was signed by Mr. Higgins and Mr. Brotherhood, the sum of $250 to be payable annually at a rate of six per cent.
On March 1, 1931, ground was broken for a church edifice by the First Selectman, Mr. George T. Smith, and Selectman George R. Stevens. A short service was then conducted by Rev. I. A. McCoy of Stamford, Connecticut. April 13th of that year witnessed the laying of the corner stone by Rev. E. W. Coit of the New York Conference. On May 3rd the Church was completed for services, which were conducted by Rev. S. P. Perry, Presiding Elder of the New England Conference. The building costs were $4,500.
We have met all payments on mortgage and reduced the mortgage to $1,875. We have now 41 members all working for the great Cause. They and the cooperation of our white friends who have given us freely of their time and interest and money have made the fulfillment of this undertaking possible.
Signed: Cora Scott and Mary Canter, Evangelists. Philip D. Nelson, Church Clerk
Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) was an important composer and arranger of music derived from spirituals.
“Burleigh’s work in preserving the slaves’ songs and making them known to the finest musicians, as well as to the public, is more important than is generally realized. Today we take for granted our possession of these musical gems. ‘Composed by no one in particular and by everyone in general,’ and until after the Civil War never put down on paper, the Negro folk songs are part of the American heritage. Forty years ago, however, only a few of them were known in the North.”
“Mr. Burleigh gave invaluable service in the work to preserve the Negro spirituals. He not only was a pioneer in singing spirituals on the concert stage, but he was among the first to set down on paper the Negro folk songs, which, until that time, had been handed down orally. There was some opinion that without his work the spirituals might have been lost because many Negroes wanted to forget them and the conditions out of which they grew….In 1892 Mr. Burleigh won a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where he was befriended by Mrs. Frances Knapp MacDowell, mother of the late Edward MacDowell, the composer, and where one of his teachers and friends was the late Antonin Dvorak, the composer of the New World Symphony. Dvorak was fascinated by Negro spirituals, and had Mr. Burleigh sing them for him over and over again, particularly after supper when the Czech composer was tired. He used the Negro spiritual theme for the largo movement in his New World Symphony in 1893, and it was generally conceded that Mr. Burleigh inspired the work. This was believed to be the first time a Negro’s song had been a major theme in a great symphonic work. “H. T. Burleigh Was One of Music’s Great Figures,” The Vineyard Gazette Time Machine. Accessed February 9, 2024.
- Biographical Profiles of Building Fund Trustees (1926 BFT) and Loan Guarantors (1928 LG)
W[illiam] H. Baldwin (1891-1980) was 1926 BFT Treasurer. A New Canaan resident whose family was committed to social justice initiatives at the local and national levels, Baldwin and his wife contributed to the fund and were active in fundraising. See research item E following.
Mrs. J[ules]. R. Breuchaud (dates not found) was a 1926 BFT trustee and 1928 LG. In 1919 she was a “captain of volunteer hostesses at the YMCA Greenhut” at 22 W 19th Street in New York City.[i] It was in a similar capacity when she met Cora Scott while both served in a Red Cross canteen in Washington during World War I. She offered Scott and Mary Cantor employment as domestics in her New Canaan home, apparently unaware of Scott’s educational background. By 1926 she was divorced or separated from Jules Ralston Breuchaud Jr. Nee Marjory Remer and aka Marjory R. Breuchaud, she was the daughter of Mrs. John D. Higgins and niece of George W. Yuengling. She had a real estate practice in New Canaan as late as 1950. In 1926 she was living with her mother and mother’s second husband John D. Higgins in “Westwings” in Silvermine. In 1930 she shared a new house with her friend and travel companion writer and poet Fanny DeGroot Hastings (1893-1968). The house, “Dormer Cottage” at 115 Greenley Road was designed by architect John Black Lee.
Mr. John [Oliver] Brotherhood (1896-), a New Canaan realtor and banker, was a 1928 LG. He was in business with Breuchaud in a real estate partnership in the 1930s.
Mrs. Mary Cantor (d.1943) founded the church with Cora Scott and was a 1926 BFT trustee. While Mrs. Cantor, a cook, lacked Mrs. Scott’s educational accomplishment, the two shared a deep religious faith and zeal and moved north together to fulfill their calling by accepting employment as domestic servants in Marjory Breuchaud’s house. The two women initiated religious services with itinerant ministers prior to 1922 in the Raymond block, the village’s largest commercial building that included a large social hall, cleaning the space in exchange for rent. Their Mission formally affiliated with the AME church in 1926 when they were ordained together as Evangelists in the denomination. Mrs. Cantor offered prayers and on occasion preached before the congregation. The AME’ bishop’s desire to relocate Mrs. Cantor to another congregation in 1942 was a major factor prompting them to change the church’s affiliation to the less hierarchical Northern Baptist Conference.
Mr. John D[‘Auby] Higgins (1858-1950) was a 1928 LG and New Canaan’s Town Counsel in 1928. A reform-minded attorney with a long career in public service in New York State, he had served as president of the Oswego Water Commission and Oswego mayor for four terms. Prior to moving to New Canaan, Higgins served as Chairman of the NY State Industrial Commission, a governmental body established in 1914 in the wake of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire as the Workmen’s Compensation Commission to set workplace safety and health rules. He served with and was succeeded there by Frances Perkins, who having witnessed the fire noted its aftermath as a “turning point” in American attitudes toward social responsibility, and went on to implement Social Security under FDR.[ii] Following the death of his first wife in 1920, he married Kate A. Remer in 1922 and moved to New Canaan where he practiced law and chaired the Town’s relief commission during the depression.[iii]
Mrs. John D. Higgins (b. 1882), 1926 BFT trustee, was Marjory Breuchaud’s mother and George W. Yuengling’s sister. She was born Kate A. Yuengling and aka Kate A. Remer from 1885-1903 during her first marriage to Frederick James Remer, who died in 1903.
Rev. W[illiam] H. Lamar, (dates not found), 1926 BFT Chairman, was the pastor of Norwalk’s Bethel AME Church in 1926. In 1919 Rev. Lamar had assumed the pastorate of Norwalk’s Union Mission Society, founded in 1874 and worked to have the independent society join a denominational body. In 1922 he proposed affiliation with the AME Church, which was accepted the following year, becoming Norwalk’s Bethel AME.[iv]
No information was found on a James Leonard who was named in the Advocate article as 1926 BFT trustee. It is possible that the paper misidentified Charles A. Leonard (1899-1979), a New Canaan resident who was born in Ashville NC and served as a deacon of the church. He retired as a custodian at New Canaan High School.
Mrs. James A. Milligan (1893-1971) was a 1926 BFT trustee and served on committee of arrangements for the benefit Negro spiritual concert. Aka Pauline Rudisill Milligan, she was “for many years a soloist in area churches,” had been “superintendent of the intermediate department of the First Methodist Church School for over 20 years,” and mother of three daughters.[v]
Mrs. Cora Scott, aka Rev. Cora S. Scott (1879-1958), founded the church with Mary Cantor, and served as the 1926 BFT Secretary, religious leader of the congregation to 1942, and pastor from 1943 until her death. Born in Prince Georges, MD, she attended Howard University’s preparatory school from 1894-96.[vi] She and Marjory Breuchaud met at a Red Cross Canteen in Washington during World War I. Relocating to New Canaan around 1919, Scott and Mary Cantor worked in Breuchaud’s household. The two women began attending services in Stamford’s Bethel AME Church in 1922 before founding the mission in New Canaan that year with services held in Raymond Hall within the Raymond block until 1931. With the help of Breuchaud and other members of the community, Scott and Cantor raised funds to purchase the church lot on Baldwin Avenue (now Cherry Street) and build the church. Scott led the congregation until her death. She was ordained as an AME Evangelist in 1926, and ordained as a minister in the New York Missionary Conference of the Norther Baptist Convention in 1942.
Mr. George W. Yuengling (1877-1957) was a 1928 LG. He was a New Canaan insurance agency owner, brother of Mrs. John D. Higgins, and uncle of Marjory Breuchaud.[vii]
[i] New York Herald, 2/24/1919, p. 14.
[ii] “U. S. Department of Labor, “The New York Factory Investigating Commission, https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/mono-regsafepart07 cached 3/26/25, 12:29 pm.
[iii] “John D. Higgins” [obituary], Stamford Advocate, January 4, 1950, p. 5.
[iv] Sarah Bean Apmann and Karen A. Kennedy TKS Historic Resources, Inc. Historic and Architectural Resources Inventory for the City of Norwalk, Connecticut (Phase I) Norwalk, CT, 2011, p. 38.
[v] “Mrs. Milligan, Noted Soloist, Is Dead at 78,” Stamford Advocate, April 21, 1971, p. 6. She was a Stamford resident before 1954. James A. Milligan [obituary], Stamford Advocate, June 21, 1972, p. 6.
[vi] A search in the digitized annual Howard University, Washington DC Catalogue[s] of The Officers and Students, Howard University Press, Washington, DC from 1894-1919 reported the enrollment of “Cora E. Scott” in the first and second years of the college preparatory school. https://dh.howard.edu/hucatalogs/index.2.html (cached 3/29/25, 1:23 pm.
[i] https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration cached 3/18/25, 5:23 pm.
[ii] As recorded in obituaries in the Stamford Advocate, included Mrs. Charles Wimberly, Laura Brown Tatum, Lucius Rilent Griggs and Lemuel W. James from Virginia, Bertha Berry, Charles A. Leonard, and Jimmy L. Ruffin from North Carolina, and Forse Lee Hollis, and Elliot and Willie Gilmore from South Carolina.
[iii] “American Red Cross Canteen Service for Negro Troops,” The Afro-American [Baltimore, MD], October 25, 1918, p. 1.
[iv] https://nul.org/news/national-urban-league-celebrates-harlem-beating-heart-black-culture-america
[v] Peter Efreneko, “Congregation is proud of its church history,” Stamford Advocate, Jan 26, 1993, p. 4.
[vi] Timothy Larsen, “Evangelicalism’s Strong History of Women in Ministry,” Reformed Journal, August 31, 2017, https://reformedjournal.com/2017/08/31/evangelicalisms-strong-history-women-ministry/ cached 3/17/2025, 7:30pm.