It was felt that Dennis had come of age when, in 1795, the Southside of town were granted a Meeting House of their own, to be erected at South Dennis. At first the new Meeting House was supplied by ministers from other churches but by 1817 the Reverend John Sanford was called as its own pastor to administer to a church membership of twenty-nine persons. Eighteen years later the church had become too small to accommodate the growing parish. Then, too, there was already stirring within men the inspirations of a country come of age, when the hurried, rather crude buildings of another era must be replaced by an architecture that was more expressively American. So, in 1835, it was decided to tear down the old edifice and build a fine, new church on the same site. It was hoped that the auctioning off of the pews, combined with the voluntary labor of men of the village, would be enough to get the building started, at least. Fortunately for all of us there was also the matter of the beans. The men of the parish met on a bitter, cold day in January to consider ways and means of financing the new church. It was the kind of day to discourage any kind of action, and the offers of financial help were desultory and infrequent. Thoroughly discouraged, one of their number slipped out of the meeting and returned to the warmth of his own fireside to think the matter over. Finally, he had an inspiration and, calling his wife he asked her if she could provide dinner for as many as were attending the meeting. “For,” he said, “if those men go home for dinner they will never come back and that will be an end to it.” Upon hearing the problem the good wife set to work. Luckily, the weeks baking was almost intact in the buttery, and, by the standards of the Cape in 1835, it was not at all unusual that there were twenty-five pies stored there. But that was not all--there was Indian Pudding, and baked beans galore, yearning for the company of the huge loaves of brown bread that soon came steaming from the oven. All that was needed to complete, a dinner, the very smell of which might fill any man with a sense of well-being--and generosity--was coffee. And soon she had made coffee, scalding hot, and brimming over from the biggest container in her house. In no time at all the full dinner had been delivered to the meeting where its effect was such that the men of the parish took on a whole new lease on life and began to outbid one another in generosity. The huge sum of $6000 was raised, enough to build the new church, and some of the men became so enthusiastic that they could not wait to get to the bank to withdraw their money.