The First Baptist Church of Swansea may look like a traditional, Greek Revival style church from the 1840s, a common form and style found in nearly every community in New England, but the church is home to the oldest Baptist congregation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and is the fourth oldest in the United States! The church (and town’s name) was founded by Reverend John Myles (c. 1621–1683), a Baptist minister who immigrated to present-day Swansea from Swansea in Wales, who was a founder of the earliest recorded Baptist churches in Wales. During the King Philip’s War, Reverend Myles fled from the fighting to Boston and pastored the new First Baptist Church in Boston. The present Greek Revival structure, the fifth of the congregation, was built under the direction of the English-born Reverend J. J. Thatcher, pastor of the church from 1846 to 1854. The vernacular Greek Revival church features a pedimented facade with pilasters dividing the bays, and a square belfry.
Buildings of New England 