Table of Contents
(by years)

• Vicinity of Chili settlement, forceful individual by name "Rev. Hugh Wallis"
• Wallis gather faithful flock of 17 parishioners which met in small groups in each others homes and been in Chili.
• Few devout families began gathering in private homes on Sunday to teach.

• First entry in the remarkable well-preserved record of (Chili) church.
  
• At a conference held agreeable to previous notice at Mr. Isaac Hemingways in the Town of Riga for the purpose of forming the professors of Religion of the Congregational or Presbyterian Order in the vicinity, into a "Church of Christ". Mr. Hemingway had offered the use of his "big room" as a place for public worship.

• Chili people began agitate the matter of building a suitable meeting house .

• Rev. Chauncey Cook became Pastor in October 1821. Cook's awareness to the Doctrinal needs of his frontier flock, he managed to put together a statement embracing Articles of Faith, a Convenant and Articles of Practice before his resignation in 1828, in which are still preserved today bye out church.

• East of Chili, neighboring Presbyterians organized their first church, meeting at the house and Howard Roads. Soon was conducting Sunday school meeting in the brick school house known as District No.7 and a log schoolhouse just west of the church.

• Chili craftsmen began to ply the broadax, a saw and plane, and to erect the square oak-framed meeting house (church) that stands today, a landmark beside a busy highway that revivifies the past.
  
• There is no evidence that any architect ever had a hand in the construction of the Church. It was therefore designed by local carpenters with the aid of a few books and drawings at hand.
  
• Summer 1832, the meeting house was framed and planked in pine" on the site now occupied as a meeting house near Benjamin Sheldon", (the former Sheldon homestead still stands opposite the church). Its beams were mortined and tenoned and pegged together. The planked walls, clapboard without, where roughly plastered within, though the uncased timbers of the frame, were at first, permitted to project into the building. Its early seats were simple benches.
  
• Building was completed in the fall, its height reaching 21 feet to the eaves. Its south wall bore a square-staged tower, erected in 2 levels, and crowned with a tall slender spire. The present squat roof which now caps the octagonal stage over a louvered belfry, replaced the loss of a taller more graceful spire during a windstorm about 1920. This whole tower is somewhat severed and unadorned as it the rest of the meeting house, the only exception being the small pinnacles capping each corner of the main building at the façade, and those pointing from the four corners of the higher balastrade. It is interesting that design and arrangement of ornament are saved until the eyes have traveled aloft, almost as though the builders were tempting us to look upward from the barrenness of earth to the beauty of heaven.

• Victorious soldiers were returning home, the church building was renovated and several interior improvements were made.
  
• The conformity with new liturgical thinking, the alter became a free-standing dias at the north end of the sanctuary. The old "box" pulpit was removed from it high position on the south wall. The pews were then likewise reversed to face the minister at the north end. Later on, a handsomely turned mahogany refectory table was placed before the alter.
  
• The pews where the first choirs were seated, still rise in a slope at the rear of the church, but are no longer the high-walled 'boxes' of the early Congregationalists.

• embarked upon a new aura of church life, true to spirit of its pioneer heritage. Parishioners turned out in force to paint the exterior of the church, resurfacing the old white clapboards in eager anticipation of a far greater volunteer effort. A bulldozer broke ground for the construction of a rear addition (Fellowship Hall) to the house Sunday school rooms and a much needed recreational and dining hall accommodation.

• Chuck Tuscher made the a beautiful stain glass window over the front door

• New Chandeliers gifted by John and Lorraine Drago.

• Sanctuary's aging and unused chimney was removed.
• A new platform was constructed as an exterior entrance to the Adult Lounge.

• All over the Church, you will find project being completed or completed, beautiful items given as gifts by members of the church throughout many years. The church building is a representative of the faithfulness of it members and community.

• A chronological History of Pastors serving the First Presbyterian Church of Chili.