Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Ancestral Church

Weathervane Wednesday is an on-going series of photographs I post weekly.  I started out by publishing only weather vanes from the Londonderry area, but now I've been finding interesting weather vanes from all over New England.  Sometimes these weather vanes are whimsical, or historical, but all are very unique.  Often, my readers tip me off to some very special and unusual weather vanes.

Today's weather vane is from somewhere in New Hampshire.

Do you know the location of weather vane #319?  Scroll down to see the answer...

This is the First Congregational Church of Hampton, New Hampshire.  It was founded by the Reverend Stephen Bachiler in 1638.  He was my 11th great grandfather, who not only founded the town, but he was also the father of ten children so he left a lot of descendants in New Hampshire!  There have been six different meeting house buildings here over the years, and today's pastor, the Rev. Deborah Knowlton,  is the 40th minister of this congregation.  She invited me and other descendants of the Batchelder and other founding families to the 375th anniversary a few years ago. You can read about that church service HERE.

The scrollwork arrow weathervane is typical of many seen atop New England churches.  Next to the banner style of weathervane, it is the most commonly seen.  This kind of weathervane became popular in the early and mid 1800s when they were mass produced by machines in factories in Waltham, Massachusetts.  The factory made arrows and banners were exceptionally fancy compared to the more simple ones made by hand.


A blog post about the Hampton Congregational Church:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/09/375th-anniversary-of-first.html

A blog post about my BATCHELDER genealogy:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/10/surname-saturday-batchelder-of-hampton.html  

The First Congregational Church, Hampton, website:
http://www.fcchampton.org/

Click here to see the entire Weathervane Wednesday series of posts!  

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Ancestral Church", Nutfield Genealogy, posted July 12, 2017, (http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/07/weathervane-wednesday-another-ancestral.html: accessed [access date]).