First Church in Roxbury (Roxbury, Boston, Mass.). Records, 1630-1956. Register of burials (record book), 1774-1862, No. 1. bMS 626/4 (8), Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School.

The area now known as Roxbury was begininng to be populated by English settlers in 1630. In 1631 the church was gathered and the first meetinghouse was built in 1632 establishing the First Church in Roxbury. That same year, Thomas Weld was ordained as the first pastor of the church, and John Eliot was ordained as the first teacher. The church was incorporated as The First Religious Society in 1825, and in 1868, Roxbury was annexed to Boston.(from An Inventory of the Records of the Particular (Congregational) Churches of Massachusetts, by Harold Field Worthley, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1970.