By an act dividing the several districts and divisions of the Province of Georgia into Parishes, passed the 15th day of March, 1758,[175] it was provided that “the town of Hardwick and district of Ogechee, on the south side of the river Great Ogechee, extending northwest up the said river so far as the Lower Indian trading path leading from Mount Pleasant, and southward from the town of Hardwick as far as the swamp of James Dunham, including the settlements on the north side of the north branches of the river Midway, with the islands of Ossabaw, and from the head of the said Dunham’s Swamp in a north-west line, shall be and forever constitute a parish by the name of ‘The Parish of St. Philip’: from Sunbury in the district of Midway and Newport from the southern bounds of the parish of St. Philip, extending southward as far as the north line of Samuel Hastings, and from thence southeast to the south branch of Newport, including the islands of St. Katharine and Bermuda, and from the north line of the said Samuel Hastings northwest, shall be and forever continue a parish by the name of ‘The Parish of St. John’: the town and district of Darien, extending from the south boundary of the parish of St. John to the river Alatamaha, including the islands of Sapelo and Eastwood, and the sea islands to the north of Egg island northwest up the river Alatamaha to the forks of the said river, shall be and forever continue a parish by the name of ‘The Parish of St. Andrew:’ and the town and district of Frederica, including the islands of Great and Little St. Simons, and the adjacent islands shall be and forever continue a parish by the name of ‘The Parish of St. James.’” Such were the territorial limits of the four southern parishes of the province, approved by Governor Ellis, and designed to promote the establishment of religious worship according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England.[176] As the early population of Sunbury was largely drawn from the members of the Midway congregation,—the most pronounced society existing within the limits of St. John’s parish at the time of its formation,—a brief sketch of that congregation and its establishment in Georgia, may not be deemed irrelevant. Early in 1697 a body of Puritans from the Towns of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Milton, in Massachusetts, taking with them their pastor,—the Reverend Joseph Lord,—and proclaiming as a leading object the encouragement of churches and the promotion of religion in the Southern plantations, removed with their families and personal effects and formed a new home at Dorchester, in the province of South Carolina. The church which they there established was the first Congregational or Independent Church within the confines of that Colony. All the other religious societies belonged to the established Church of England.