The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886.: The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886.Various
History
The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886.: The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886.
Various
New England -- Periodicals
For nearly three years thereafter the pot continued to boil, but nothing
more was done about church affairs in town meeting, except that on May
17, 1793, the people showed their obstinacy by refusing "to repair the
meeting-house windows, and to paint the outside of the meeting-house."
Sept. 3, 1794, operations were again renewed by voting "to erect a
meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenientest
place thereto, to accommodate the inhabitants thereof for divine
worship." Three disinterested individuals, Joseph Stearns and David
Kilburn of Lunenburg, and Benjamin Kimball of Harvard, were chosen by
ballot as a committee to discover that much-to-be-desired spot, "the
nearest convenientest place to the centre." They found the centre to be
a little less than a quarter of a mile north-east of the pound, but
considered the most eligible location for the house to be about a half a
mile south of this point, which would have placed it near the present
junction of Main and River Streets. Oct. 21 a meeting was called to
hear their report and it was rejected 36 to 29. So the opinions of
interested and disinterested persons seem to have been considered of
about equal value--as good for nothing.
Nov. 21, 1794, a motion "to place the meeting-house on the spot where
the committee out of town proposed" was negatived, forty-eight to
forty-five. A committee was then appointed to select a suitable place.
Dec. 1 this committee reported in favor of "setting the meeting-house
near the high bridge, under the hill" (the place the out-of-town
committee had proposed). This report was accepted, sixty-one to
forty-seven. A town meeting was therefore called Jan. 8, 1795, to choose
a committee to purchase the land agreed upon; but at the meeting the
town refused to choose such a committee, and so ended the plan of
building a meeting-house there.
Jan. 26, 1795, the town voted "to erect a meeting-house on the town's
land they purchased of Thomas Boynton, about five rods south-west from a
large white oak tree, and to pattern it after the Leominster
meeting-house." It was to be completed by the last day of December,
1796.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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