And it would remain a Baptist church for the next 175 years.
175 Years of Gospel Ministry
From 1849 to 2024, generations of pastors shepherded the congregation at 29 Huntington Street. The names and faces changed, but the commitment remained: preach the word, make disciples, build the church.
Rev. Jabez Swan served as founding pastor.14 He was followed by J.P. Swan, S.B. Grant, A.P. Buel, J.B. Barry, J.J. Townsend, J.S. Swan, J.K. Wilson, and many others through the decades.15
The church weathered economic depression, two world wars, cultural revolution, and the steady secularization of New England. Members were born, came to faith, married, raised families, and went to glory. The building on the granite outcrop remained, and Sunday after Sunday, the gospel was proclaimed.
By 1850, the church reported 311 members.16 Numbers rose and fell over the decades. Attendance ebbed and flowed. But the work continued.
This is the part of church history that doesn’t make headlines. No dramatic revivals. No scandals. No megachurch growth. Just faithful pastors preaching, faithful members serving, and a faithful God preserving His witness in a challenging mission field.
New England has never been easy soil for the gospel. But Huntington Street Baptist Church persisted.
The Challenge of Decline
By the early 2020s, the church faced the reality confronting many historic urban congregations: declining attendance, aging membership, and a building requiring substantial investment.
The congregation had to make a choice: slowly fade into history, or pursue radical renewal.
In 2023, faithful Pastor, Byron “Bud” Westbrook, and the church leadership chose renewal and continued history. They partnered with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and Send Network to execute a church replant—a deliberate restart designed to bring new life while maintaining commitment to biblical truth.17
This decision required faith and humility. A replant means acknowledging that the current trajectory leads to closure. It means welcoming new leadership with authority to make significant changes. It means trusting that God can bring resurrection life even to a dying work.
God Raises Up a New Generation
In early 2024, God provided the man to lead this replant.
Pastor Rocco “Rocky” Gammone Jr. received endorsement as a church planter with NAMB’s Send Network and accepted the call as pastor and church re-planter of Huntington Street Baptist Church.18
Gammone brought the heart of a missionary to a building with 175 years of history. The partnership with Send Network provided resources, training, and support that a small, declining congregation could never generate alone.
Starting in April 2024, the church began the replanting process. This involved more than changing a name or updating the website. Everything was reconsidered: worship style, outreach methods, discipleship structures, community engagement, organizational systems.
The goal wasn’t merely to preserve a historic building but to see God save souls and build his church in New London.
Easter Sunday 2025: A New Beginning
On April 20, 2025, On The Rock Community Church officially launched.19
The name reflects both the physical reality—the church building sits on that same granite outcrop where the Universalists built in 1843—and the spiritual foundation from Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:24-25: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”20
13 “Huntington Street Baptist Church,” Wikipedia.
14 Ibid.
15 Frances Manwaring Caulkins, “History of New London” (New London, 1860), quoted in “Huntington Street Baptist Church (1843),” Historic Buildings of Connecticut, accessed December 26, 2025.
16 “Religious Diversity Historical Marker,” Historical Marker Database, accessed December 26, 2025, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=216491.
17 “History of New London County, Connecticut,” compiled under supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1882), 192-206.
18 Ibid.
19 Caulkins, “History of New London.”
20 “History of New London County, Connecticut.”
