Among the unpublished material to which I have referred are the records of the First Church of Quincy,--originally and for more than a century and a half (1639-1792) the Braintree North Precinct Church. The volume of these records covering the earliest period of the history of the Society cannot now be found. It was in the possession of the church in 1739, for it was then used and referred to by the Rev. John Hancock, father of the patriot, and fifth pastor of the church, in the preparation of two centennial sermons preached by him at that time; but eighty-five years later, when, in 1824, the parish was separated from the town, the earliest book of regular records then transferred from the town to the parish clerk went no farther back than Jan. 17, 1708. There is, however, another volume of records still in existence, apparently not kept by the regular precinct clerk, the entries in which, all relating to the period between 1673 and 1773, seem to have been made by five successive pastors. Small and bound in leather, the paper of which this volume is made up is of that rough, parchment character in such common use during the last century, and the entries in it, in five different handwritings, are in many cases scarcely legible, and frequently of the most confidential character. In the main they are records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths; but some of them relate to matters of church discipline, and these throw a curious light on the social habits of a period now singularly remote. In view of what this volume contains, the loss of the previous volume containing the record of the church's spiritual life from the time it was organized to 1673, a period of thirty-four years, becomes truly an _hiatus valde deflendus_.[2]