This was a bitter pill for the east to swallow. Resolved on retaliation, the east called a town meeting immediately "To see if the town will comply with a request of a number of the inhabitants of Fitchburg, to grant that they, together with their respective estates and interests, may be set off from Fitchburg and annexed to Lunenburg." This request was denied. The honest people, who, for the sake of peace and reconciliation had favored the west at the previous meeting, were now thoroughly alarmed. They held the balance of power, and were in a very unpleasant predicament. If they voted to place the new house in the east, the west threatened to form a new parish; and if they favored the west, the east evinced strong symptoms of returning to the parent town of Lunenburg. Meanwhile, undaunted by this sudden squall in the east, the committee had bargained for the frame of the new meeting-house being erected in the north-westerly part of the town, prepared a site for the new house on the land of Ezra Upton's heirs, and done sundry other wise things. Nov. 17, 1788, a town meeting was called to listen to the report of this committee. Their excellent progress was set forth with great confidence, whereupon the meeting gravely voted not to accept the report, and added insult to injury by summarily discharging the committee from further service. This was done by the peacemakers who were at their wits' ends, and this time threw their influence into the eastern scale. At this meeting a committee was chosen to find the centre of the town. After a survey, the centre was found to be on the land of one Thomas Boynton, about five hundred feet north of the pound. Their report was accepted at a town meeting held Dec. 18, 1788, and a committee, consisting of Thomas Cowdin, Phineas Hartwell, Oliver Stickney, Daniel Putnam, and Paul Wetherbee, was chosen to bargain for a site in the most suitable place. This committee bought twenty-two and a half acres of land, a little south of the pound, of Boynton, paying therefor two dollars and thirty-three cents per acre, and the town approved this action. The west, not thinking this location near enough, resorted to the old scheme of forming a new town, and called two meetings for that purpose, thereby scaring the conscientious peacemakers nearly out of their wits; but for some reason or other the men of the west did not put in an appearance, and these two meetings were uncommonly peaceable. The petitions were dismissed. The reason of their non-appearance at these meetings probably was that the people of the west, who all this time were carrying on their plans vigorously but quietly, as will soon be seen, wished to lull the rest of the town into a sense of security.