200th Anniversary Kickoff Celebration

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua is celebrating its first two hundred years of serving the Greater Nashua area on Sunday, September 27, 2026 with historical walking tours, a celebratory worship service, and a festive lunch featuring 200 cupcakes. This congregation, at 58 Lowell Street, is well known for its long history of community involvement, and in recent years for giving away all donations to the weekly collection plate to support a wide variety of charitable organizations throughout the greater Nashua area.

Kicking off a full bicentennial year of commemorations, the celebratory worship service will begin on Sunday at 10 am with a historical exploration of where we started and how we evolved to the present day. The public is welcome to attend, to enjoy instrumental and vocal music, and to learn more about the history of the congregation. As always, the service will contain material accessible to all ages and to virtual attendees. 

A lunch party will follow the service, with activities and food for all guests free of charge. There will be a timeline and displays about the church history, as well as games and an opportunity for members and friends to record their oral history contributions to a UU Nashua Stories Project. For dessert, attendees will share 200 cupcakes – a monumental treat which the founders in 1826 would never have envisioned!

Walking tours of Nashua will conclude the day’s events, starting at 12:45pm on September 27, also free of charge. The guided stroll through the downtown area will bring visitors to relevant sites in Unitarian and Universalist history, and will last approximately 75 minutes. Advanced registration is required to ensure there are enough tour guides. 

Celebrations of the UU Church’s 200th birthday will continue throughout the year. Plans for a contra-dance are in the works for the winter, with the public invited. A highlight of the calendar will be the Bicentennial High Tea planned for spring of 2027, where period-appropriate costumes or accessories from the 1800’s are encouraged. The church year will culminate in June 2027 in a traditional Flower Communion, a party, and a celebration of the anniversary of the original church building where this congregation still meets today. 

Reverend Allison Palm has been preparing to mark this anniversary for several years, even to the extent of completing major renovations to the 200 year-old church building in time to welcome curious visitors. “This church was founded two hundred years ago because people were looking for new ways to be in community together,” she said. “We are proud of our two centuries of building transformative community and embodying love in action, and look forward to another 200 years to come.”

The origin of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua 

This church’s bicentennial is closely tied to the history of Nashua itself. The founding Unitarian congregation was organized in 1826, when this community was still known as Dunstable, more than a decade before the name Nashua was officially adopted. The Universalist tradition followed, with the formal organization of the First Universalist Parish in 1835. 

For more than a century, the two congregations followed separate but often closely connected paths through Nashua’s growth, civic development, and social change. Both traditions were marked by progressive religious ideas, a concern for social reform, and a strong commitment to serving the wider community. Many of the people who helped shape early Nashua were members of these congregations, and many are buried in our historic cemetery. 

In 1957, the Unitarian and Universalist societies formally united to create the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua. Our bicentennial therefore commemorates not only 200 years of congregational life, but a religious history that reaches back to the beginnings of modern Nashua and reflects the evolution of the city itself.

For further information, please contact:  Rev. Allison Palm,
Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, minister@uunashua.org, (603) 882-1091

Register for the historical walking tour on September 27, 2026, here: https://tinyurl.com/uucn200

Learn more about the Bicentennial Celebrations and the congregation’s history on the church website, here: https://uunashua.org/celebrate-200-years-of-uu-nashua/