Negative evidence, or lack of positive statement, should not be forced, but since it has been employed to prove the formation of a church here at a given date, perhaps we may be permitted to urge it a little more strongly in favor of an earlier date for the same event. If there were, as is admitted, ten other churches in existence on the shores of the Bay at the arrival of the Hull company in 1635, and that company proceeded immediately to form the eleventh, in accordance with the universal custom, several of the preceding ten must have been called to assist in its organization, in which case we can hardly conceive it possible that some one at least of the number should not have made the transaction a matter of record, or that their records should not in some way allude to it, for the formation of a new church was then a matter of some importance, but nowhere, in church or state or private records, do we find the slightest intimation of such an event; whereas, had there been a church formed at an earlier date, when there was no other existing on the shores of New England, besides that at Plymouth, and that not in sympathy, we have a very good reason why we hear nothing of it. The material needs of the new settlement and other causes before alluded to might prevent its own record, while the distractions afterwards existing, and the consequent jealousies between the contending parties might easily forbid any subsequent one. The theory of a regular succession of pastors beginning with Mr. Hull in 1635, and following down through Mr. Jenner, Mr. Lenthal and Mr. Newman, until Mr. Thacher is reached, has been a favorite one, but is hardly admissible in face of the evidence already produced, which would rather go to show the attempted formation of a second church by some of the conflicting interests in opposition to one already in existence. We may hope at some time to discover further testimony with which to settle this vexed question, but for the present we must be content to allow it to rest upon no firmer basis than probability, yet with that strongly in favor of a much earlier organization of the church, reaching back perhaps to 1623. FOOTNOTES: [99] The Old North Church of Weymouth was organized Jan. 30, 1638/9. The diary of the Rev. Peter Hobart, the minister at Hingham, Mass., from 1635 to 1679, reads: “Jan. 30, 1639, [N. S.] A church gathered at Weymouth.” (From a paper on “The Organization of the Old North Church of Weymouth,” read before the Weymouth Historical Society, Feb. 24, 1904, by George W. Chamberlain, and published in the _Weymouth Gazette_, March 18, following.) WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER A PAPER READ BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS BEFORE THE WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT THE FOGG OPERA HOUSE, SOUTH WEYMOUTH, ON THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, THE 23D SEPTEMBER, 1904.