The way having been thus prepared, Rev. Samuel Newman came to Weymouth in 1639, where he remained for four or five years, but the seeds of former troubles had not yet ceased to sprout; the difficulty was not wholly overcome; the spirit of unrest that had for some years so possessed the people would not so soon be quieted. He found his position anything but a bed of roses, and he was glad to emigrate to escape the labor of so hard a field; therefore, in 1644, he, with some 40 families, sought refuge in Seekonk, which, in memory of the occasion and its cause, he called Rehoboth, “The Lord hath made room for us.” Not because Weymouth had become too narrow in territory for them, for probably not a quarter of its acres had been taken up, but for the same reason that separated Abraham and Lot. The pressure was on the spirit and not upon the body; and so, rather than continue the quarrel, they sought a new home further in the wilderness. Common tradition, which most of the historians have followed, says that he took with him a majority of his congregation, but with the facts relative to the population that we have already before us, it will be easy to prove that this could not have been correct, for we have seen that at the date of the first meeting held by the original planters of Seekonk, which by the way was held in Weymouth, 24 October, 1643, the latter town had at least 130 families, probably a good many more, while of these only 23 names are found in the list of the original proprietors of Seekonk, four of whom certainly remained in Weymouth, leaving but 19 out of which to manufacture a majority of 130. This emigration was indeed a serious loss, but its general effect was hardly perceptible, and the business of the town apparently went on as though nothing important had happened. Rev. Mr. Newman was born in Banbury, England, in 1600; graduated at Oxford, in 1620; came to Dorchester, Mass., in 1636, and to Weymouth, in 1639; whence he removed to Rehoboth, where he died 5 July, 1663. “He was a hard student, an animated preacher, and an excellent man, ardently beloved and long lamented by his people. He compiled by the light of pine knots, a concordance of the Bible, the third at that time in the English language, and the best. While living he was defrauded of the pecuniary profits of his work, and when dead, he was robbed also of the name, the work being afterwards known as ‘Cruden’s Concordance.’” With the withdrawal of Mr. Newman, and the settlement of Mr. Thomas Thacher, who was ordained 2 January, 1644, the perplexing trouble of the Weymouth church came to an end, and an era of extended prosperity dawned upon it. From this time forward the history of the church can be traced quite fully and accurately, although it has no records of its own previous to the time of Rev. William Smith, those for the first hundred years of its existence being missing.