Florence’s third-oldest African-American congregation was founded ca. 1876 with the help of the Congregationalists of New York, who also built a school for freedmen named the Carpenter School, but known locally as the Canaan School. The church met in a building on North Pine Street, but the school was located in southwest Florence. Pastors of the First Congregational Church were also the principals of the Canaan School. A new place of worship was built on Pine Street in 1878-1879 with the assistance of the American Missionary Society of New York. Its first recorded pastor was Rev. L. C. Anderson. In 1882 the Central South Congregational Conference met there. First Congregational Church dissolved around 1939. The Methodist Community Church met at the site in the 1940s, succeeded by The Tennessee Valley Community Church in the 1950s.