The name “First Presbyterian Church” has a long history in Green Bay, but it didn’t start with this church. No, the first church known as “First Presbyterian Church” is actually the ancestor of Union Congregational Church on Madison Street. Why is that?

A bit of background. Presbyterians and Congregationalists were (mostly) friendly rivals in terms of frontier evangelization. They both wanted to convert the Native American population to Protestant Christianity, recruit new settlers to their churches, and at least try to make a dent in the armor of the Catholic church, which was a well-established and powerful force in the Northwest Territories, which what is now Wisconsin was part of.

To that end, Presbyterian and Congregational leaders agreed that if one of them organized a church in an area, the other would refrain from doing so at the same time in order to avoid competing amongst themselves at the expense of their joint goal of establishing Protestantism in what was then the wilderness.

As it turned out the Presbyterians got to Green Bay first- sort of. On December 30, 1835 the Rev. Cutting Marsh was called to serve a congregation to be called the First Presbyterian Church. In January 1836, the first public service was held at Fort Howard Hospital (now located at Heritage Hill State Park). This church was informally known as a “Presbygational” church because although it was called “Presbyterian” it had a Congregational form of government (perhaps more on that in a later article.)

In 1840, First Presbyterian’s pastor, the Reverend Stephen Peet, spearheaded a Plan of Union by which Presbyterian and Congregational churches in Wisconsin were brought together in one convention. The main purpose of the Convention was to enable cooperative missionary activities and foster the founding of new churches. As it turned out, the vast majority of the new churches had a Congregational form of government.

For a variety of reasons The Plan of Union fell into disfavor and was pretty much dead by 1850.

In 1849, 10 members were dismissed from First Presbyterian so they could form what is now First United Presbyterian Church in De Pere.

So there’s a bit of background on the name “First Presbyterian” in the Green Bay area before our time.

The recorded history of our church starts with a meeting held March 13, 1876, by nine interested men at the home of David McCartney to determine whether there was sufficient interest to organize a Presbyterian church on the west side of the Fox River in what was then known as Fort Howard.

The group quickly moved to establish Sunday “meetings” at Salscheider’s Hall on the corner of Walnut and Pearl Streets, the current site of Family and Childcare Resources of Northeast Wisconsin. The rent was two dollars a week, plus an additional 50 cents per week for fuel. The first meeting was held without a pastor on May 2, 1876. There were 15 charter members.

But even then, where was the name “First Presbyterian”? According to the Presbyterian Church USA(PCA) Office of History, our church was first reported by the Winnebago Presbytery in 1877 as the Fort Howard Presbyterian Church. This was changed to the West Presbyterian Church (or West Side Presbyterian Church) and finally became First Presbyterian Church in 1902.

In the meantime, on May 9, 1899 the original First Presbyterian changed its denominational affiliation from Presbyterian to Congregational and its name to Union Congregational Church, perhaps giving our church the incentive to change its name.