The support of a “learned and orthodox minister” was implied in the original grant of this township. In the strict construction of the text of the original compact, “orthodoxy” meant Calvinistic Congregationalism. The disturbed condition of the early settlement prevented the establishment of a permanent local pastorate till 1757. On the 8th of September of that year, it was voted to settle the Rev. James Scales, and that he should be ordained on the 23d of the following November. His salary was to be sixty Spanish milled dollars, or their equivalent in paper bills, a year. When the town became incorporated in 1765, the formal acknowledgment of Mr. Scales as legal pastor was renewed, it being the 4th of March, and his salary was named at £13, 10s. In progress of time different religious societies became established in this town, but the Congregational alone drew support from any portion of the populace by a direct tax. People were taxed for the support of the Congregational ministry in this town as late as 1810. The warrant for a town-meeting called for the 12th of March, 1811, contained this article: “To see what method the town will take to raise money for the support of the Congregational minister in town the ensuing year, how levied, and how divided between the two meeting-houses.” At this time a meeting-house had been, for about ten years, in existence at Campbell’s Corner, in the westerly part of the town, and since its erection the funds for the support of Congregational preaching derived from taxes had been divided between the east and west meeting-houses, as they were called. However, at the town-meeting called for the above date, it was voted to “pass over the article” relating to the proposed support of Congregational religious services by the town, and we think the subject was never taken up again. The minister’s tax was never collected of any person who acknowledged a belief in the religious principles of any legalized society, other than the Congregational. The following vote, passed on the 25th of March, 1799, illustrated the method of raising the minister’s tax: “Voted to lay a ministerial tax on the Congregational inhabitants at twenty cents each on the poll, and upon all ratable estate in the same proportion, Congregational inhabitants to be ascertained by consent, individually, to either of the selectmen at the time of taking the inventory.” People liable to pay a minister’s tax sometimes publicly, in town-meeting, declared their adhesion to the principles of some one or other of the societies exempted from the payment of that tax. The lease of the parsonage lands in 1798, incurred an annual revenue which was proportionately divided among the existing societies till the year 1853. In the year 1842, when the town for the first time published a printed report of its pecuniary transactions, the last division of parsonage money was declared to be as follows: