Most of the land in the “Mittineague” section of town was given out to the inhabitants in what were called “the Scheme Grants of 1739”. The grants varied in size and shape and the land was wetland in many areas leading to it being called “Sucky Swamp” in many early records.
At the time of its granting the land in the vicinity was not highly valued but that all changed in 1835 when the railroad between Worcester and Boston became a reality and plans were being drawn up to extend the line through West Springfield to Albany, New York. Mills were soon built along the Agawam River at Mittineague Falls. The combination of the building of the mills and the 1846 potato famine in Ireland brought a large number of Irish immigrants to Mittineague and led to demands for schools, stores and a fire station in the neighborhood.
By 1869 the Irish population had increased to a point where Mittineague could support a Roman Catholic Church and the first Catholic Church in West Springfield, St. Thomas the Apostle, was built on Pine Street.
Around 1850 a second group of newcomers made their way to Mittineague. This group did not have to travel very far, in fact most of them had lived in West Springfield all of their lives. They came to Mittineague as part the anti-slavery movement that was, at that time, sweeping through the northeastern United States.
It was in 1843 that an incident occurred at the First Congregational Church, now called the White Church on White Church Hill, which caused the congregation there to split into two parts. The minister of the White Church, Reverend Wood, was called upon to announce to the congregation that an anti-slavery speaker was coming to address them. The manner in which the pastor read the notice was “so ungracious and unsympathetic” that it angered and offended the anti-slavery element of the church and caused that group to leave the church and form their own congregation.
The anti-slavery group, numbering 27 of which 17 were women, first joined with a Methodist group, which already existed in town. Within a few years they separated from the Methodists and in 1850 they met in the counting room of the Agawam Canal Company in Mittineague and formed the Congregational Society of Agawam Falls later renamed Mittineague Congregational Church. They purchased a little downtown church and moved it up Tubb’s Hill, now called Westfield Street, to the corner of Second and Upper Church Streets near the Mittineague School Parking lot. The little church burned down in 1879 and the church now located on that lot was built at that time.
By the early 1950’s the congregation had outgrown their church so they built a new larger facility on Westfield Street near Rogers Avenue which is still in use today.
The old Mittineague Congregational Church building on Upper Church Street is now owned by the Church of Christ.