USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lynn > Celebration of the 275th anniversary of the First Church of Christ : Lynn, Massachusetts, Sunday, June ninth nineteen hundred seven > Part 5
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"The Parish considering that sundry of our neighbors called Quakers, who have in times past requested to be dismissed from paying taxes to our minister, Rev. Nathan- iel Henchman, which in some respects hath been granted - but now our Parish observing said Quakers frequently purchasing lands, that have usually paid to the support of our minister in times past, and under like obligation with
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our other lands to pay to the maintenance of our minister - wherefore, voted, that all the lands belonging to said Parish, purchased by said Quakers (not meaning one of another) since the settlement of our present minister, as also all other ratable lands, in whose hands soever, shall for the future pay to said Parish, excepting only such lands and estates of the several Quakers hereafter named, now freed from paying to the Parish the present year, and the same to be at the discretion of the Parish, from year to year, whether to pay or not."
Then follows a list of fifteen persons that were exempt. Similar votes, exempting individuals in about the same number, were passed from year to year for several years. From this it seems that it had been the custom before this to exempt individuals to some extent.
The Society of Friends, considering its antagonistic origin, has little to complain of Puritan intolerance in Lynn. The Friends were thrifty and were adroit manipu- lators of men. They not only secured an exemption of their lands from contribution towards support of the min- istry, but they exhibited a juggling feat with the schools such as no other society here ever approached.
Wherever in this country the Roman Catholics have asked for a division of school funds, the Protestants have with one accord sounded the tocsin of alarm.
The early Friends in the reign of Charles the Second, through the friendship between James, Duke of York, and William Penn, had a suspiciously close bond of union with the Catholics in their common dislike of Puritanism. The intervening centuries have broken down the barriers of
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sect and good men of the Twentieth Century can look back to the Seventeenth with charity and respect for their for- bears of the parent stock whatever peculiarity of creed they affected.
Both Friends and Roman Catholics have always pro- fessed a strong desire for a guarded religious training for the young of their sects. Later developments reveal how in the fulness of time this scheme worked in Lynn.
In a paper on the "Origin of Quakerism," prepared by Samuel Boyce, it is related :
"In 1784 application was made to the Selectmen of Lynn for the proportion of the money which Friends were an- nually paying for the support of the public schools to be refunded to them, in order that it might be used towards defraying the expenses of their own school. Objections were at first made to this request but after some time had elapsed Friends were allowed to draw back annually a por- tion of this money for that purpose. The school was con- tinued about forty years, and this privilege was granted them most of the time."
Not only were the Friends allowed their proportion of the school fund, but they were (as a Society) permitted to choose members of the School Committee, and were wherever they lived a School Ward of the Town by themselves.
Thus was established a full-fledged and original Parochial School on the soil of Puritan Lynn.
The Methodists attempted the same Parochial project, but in Town Meeting, Feb. 23, 1792, it was voted "That the Methodists do not draw their part of the school money back.'
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In 1821 the Friends' Parochial School was done away with by a vote "That the Town be redistricted anew, as it respects the several schools without any regard to any par- ticular religious society."
It was not till the close of Rev. Jeremiah Shepard's happy and united pastorate of forty-one years that the First Parish and the people of Lynn realized that the golden age of the Puritan Theocracy had passed - that the ecclesiastical and civil concerns of the whole people were not within the scope of the First Parish.
Lynnfield had become an independent Parish, and the Friends within the territory of the First Parish had become land-owners exempt from Parish taxes and voters in Town meetings. The most laconic and yet comprehensive statement of the actual divorce of Parish and Town is to be found in Dr. Cooke's "Centuries" (p. 196) :
"Several noteworthy events affecting the Parish took place during Mr. Henchman's ministry. The next year after his settlement, that is, 1721, the Parish ceased to have its business done in Town meeting. The separation was effected on this wise: At a Town meeting there was an adjournment of Town business for half an hour to give the members of the Parish time for preliminary action. Then in a meeting ordered by those of the Selectmen belonging to the Parish, a vote of members of the Parish was passed, ordering Richard Johnson and Theophilus Burrill to call a Parish meeting for organizing. The meeting was called, and a hundred voters attended and unanimously concurred in the proceedings."
Dr. Cooke is so confident in his facts that he does not
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trouble himself with giving authorities that might lighten the labors of later gleaners in the local historical field, hence it was a pleasing surprise to find that his statement was an almost exact transcript of the record of the Town Meeting held March 5, 1721-22. That event, so tersely recorded, was one of the milestones in our history. It marked the close of a century of homogeneous Colonial life under the teachings of pure Calvinism expounded by Whiting, Cobbet and Shepard.
The Town record was made as if an ordinary event was chronicled. Very few, if any, more striking and pregnant happenings ever took place within the walls of the Old Tunnel Meeting-house. The record was coolly made. The actors so far as we know were as "impassive as the marble in the quarry," utterly unconscious of the passing of the Puritan idea and the incoming of the modern Town Meet- ing, divested of all ecclesiastical, and clothed with only civic powers.
On the surface it would appear that this separation should include a discontinuance of the use of the meeting- house for the transaction of Town business. On the con- trary, the Town used the building in all its official affairs for more than three-quarters of a century after this time. Within its homely walls men of the First Parish, Friends, the voters of Lynnfield and of Saugus debated and made appropriations for Town purposes while much history was making itself.
The great Provincial feat of arms - the capture of Louisburg (the French Gibraltar in America) - by Massachusetts soldiers and sailors in 1745, happened
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while the Old Tunnel remained the Council House of the Town.
Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, the War of the Revo- lution, the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the Pres- idency of Washington and of the elder Adams and other marvelous events occurred while the village Solons con- tinued there to discuss problems of social life.
Three generations walked up and down the sombre aisles ere the friction between Parish and Town became apparent, which resulted, in 1806, in the abandonment by or the expulsion of the Town from the meeting-house.
In order to show the tense relations of the people - the conservative clinging of the towns-people to the old house even after they had forsaken the faith therein preached - some reports and votes have been culled from the records. Only a small fraction of the voluminous records is copied, and that not consecutively, but barely enough to give a hint of the importance of the issue in the minds of the fathers. First we copy from the Parish Records. By the Parish Records it will be seen that the Parish in the begin- ning of the contention did not absolutely bar the Town from its house, but simply insisted that it should only be used in rotation with the other meeting-houses in Town - that is, that the hitherto undivided burden of the Parish in providing shelter for the Town should be divided and borne in part by the other societies.
March 20, 1805, the Parish
"Voted that the Town shall not in the future hold their Town meetings in the First Parish meeting-house only in rotation, and the April meeting to be considered as one.
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"Voted that the Parish Committee be directed to notify the Selectmen of this vote."
Jan. 9, 1806 :
"Voted to accept of the report of their committee, which is as follows, viz .: The Parish, at their meeting in March last, voted that it was not their choice that the Town should hold any Town meeting in future in the said Parish meeting-house unless by rotation in the several meeting-houses in Town, and that the meeting in April then next ensuing might be holden in said house as the first in rotation - the meeting was accordingly held in said house, and in May following, the Town voted that their meeting should be holden in rotation in the several meet- ing-houses in Town.
"The Selectmen of the Town now ask leave of the First Parish to hold their next Town Meeting in their meeting- house as the first meeting in the rotation. Although the Parish conceive that they have already taken their turn yet they are willing to sacrifice their own private interest and feelings, and submit to a partial evil for the general good, it is therefore voted that the Town be permitted to hold their next meeting in the said house as the first in the rotation. Provided that the next meeting be holden and finished previously to the first day of March next.
Signed by the Committee,
JAMES GARDNER. WM. MANSFIELD. FRED BREED. THOMAS RHODES. CHARLES NEWHALL."
Jan. 16, 1806.
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Jan. 30, 1806:
"Voted that the Parish Committee be a committee to appear at the adjournment of the Town meeting and for- bid the Town in the name and behalf of the First Parish, of ever holding any Town Meeting in said Parish Meeting- house in future unless by the consent of the said Parish.
" Voted that the Clerk serve the Town with a copy of the above vote."
GLEANINGS FROM THE TOWN RECORDS.
"The undersigned, a committee chosen by the Town to treat with a committee from the First Parish in Lynn in order to effect a settlement of a dispute that has arisen relative to the right claimed by the Town to transact their public business in the old meeting-house, so-called, report that they have the mortification to learn that the Parish has declined to unite with the Town in this pacific measure. But although the conduct of the Parish in this respect may appear to close the door against all further attempts of the Town towards a compromise, nevertheless, when we recollect that some of the proceedings of our last meet- ing however well intended or proper in themselves, give umbrage to many of our brethren of the Parish as being in their opinion calculated to prevent a reconciliation, and although we are compelled in justice to the Town to declare that we view the measures as respects their appointment of a committee as sufficient evidence of the Town's accom- modating disposition, and that the omission of the Town through mistake to invest them with power to treat, etc., does not in the least weaken or impair that evidence, never- theless, we, the Town, in the spirit of charity and candor will give the complaints of the Parish before hinted all that weight they may desire, that we take leave further to recommend that in order to evidence beyond a doubt that
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the Town are still desirous to promote concord and har- mony between them and their brethren of the Parish, and to avoid the manifold evils of a contest in law, where the interest of the parties are so connected and blended that however decided in law will, in addition to an enormous expense, be attended with far more pernicious conse- quences, when fellow citizens of the same Town, the same neighborhood, family connections, near relatives, etc., will be enclosed in an unhappy quarrel which in the nature of things will give strength to those discordant passion which are the baneful source of human misery.
"As a means to avoid these accumulated evils and to establish tranquility among all classes of our fellowtown's- men, your committee respectfully submit for your consid- eration, whether it would not be best for the Town by Re- solve by vote, that we are still ready to listen to any pro- posals from the Parish that may tend towards an amicable settlement of this unhappy dispute.
JOSEPH FULLER, HENRY BURCHSTEAD, NATHAN HAWKES, RICH'D SHUTE, TIMOTHY MUNROE, MICA'H NEWHALL, Committee.
Lynn, Feb. 9, 1806.
The warrant for Town Meeting, dated March 7, 1806, contained this article:
" Also to determine what further measures are necessary for the Town to adopt to support and establish a privilege of meeting in the old meeting-house which they and their fathers have ever heretofore enjoyed and to determine where the next meeting shall be called."
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Town Meeting, March 17, 1806:
"Voted to refer the determination of the matter of right of meeting in the old meeting-house to the adjourn- ment of this meeting, and the Town are ready to meet the Parish by their committee to compromise the business."
Under same date the next action was:
"Voted the Selectmen apply to the Methodist Society for their house to hold the April meeting in.
"Voted to adjourn this meeting to the place where the April meeting shall be held."
The warrant for the Annual Meeting for the choice of State Officers for 1806 began as follows:
"The freeholders and other inhabitants of the Town of Lynn qualified as the law requires, are hereby notified to attend a Town Meeting to be holden at the Methodist meeting-house in said Town on Monday the 7th day of April next at 1 o'clock P.M.
HENRY HALLOWELL, HENRY OLIVER, NATHAN HAWKES, Selectmen.
dated - Lynn, March 28, 1806.
Lynn, April 7, 1806:
"Met agreeable to notification. At this meeting it was voted to choose a committee for the purpose of filling up the blanks for a compromise with the old Parish, relative to the Town's using the old meeting-house, and to report at May meeting.
"Voted, Zachariah Attwill, Samuel Collins, Abner Cheever and Thomas Mansfield be said committee.
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"Voted, the Selectmen provide a house for May meeting at the Town's expense."
May 1, 1806:
"The Selectmen issue the warrant for Town meeting for choice of Representatives to General Court to be held in the old meeting-house, May 12, 1806."
This report was made at the meeting :
"As it appears to be the wish of both Town and Parish to have the unhappy dispute between the Town and First Parish respecting the old meeting-house amicably adjusted the following is submitted to the Town for their considera- tion; it is thought it will meet the views of both parties.
"The Town cannot comply with the proposition of the Parish as offered to the Town's committee.
" But the Town are willing to relinquish all their right in the said house on the following considerations, viz. :
"I. The Town shall have leave to transact all munici- pal business in the said house as usual.
"2. The Town shall sweep said house and if necessary wash it as soon as may be after each meeting.
"3. The Town shall make good all damages which the house shall sustain by such meeting as soon as may be after each meeting, and in case of any dispute the Town shall choose one man and the Parish one, who shall be arbitrators to fix sd damage.
"4. The Town shall pay the Parish Treasurer annually the sum of dollars as the Town's proportion of the general repairs in and on the house.
"5. This stipulation shall continue in force for the term of years.
" The committee appointed on the part of the Town at their meeting on the 7th of April, have met with the com-
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mittee on the part of the First Parish and have agreed to fill up the blanks left within the proposals as follows, viz .: the blank for compensation to be filled with twenty-eight dollars per annum and the blank for the number of years filled at twenty years.
" And the same is submitted to the Town and Parish. "Lynn, April 28, 1806.
ZAC'H ATTWILL, FRED'K BREED,
SAM'L COLLINS, THOMAS RHODES,
ABNER CHEEVER, WILL'M MANSFIELD,
THOMAS MANSFIELD, EPH'M BREED,
on the part of the Town. on the part of the Parish."
"Voted by the Town on the 12 of this instant May to re- ject the above report."
The next warrant for Town Meeting was issued Jan. 10, 1807, and the place of meeting was the Methodist meeting- house.
At the April meeting, 1807, there was allowed:
"For the use and repairs of the Methodist meeting- house $42.25.
N.B. - The above sum included nineteen dollars paid to Col. Breed and Harris Chadwell for the use and repairs of the old meeting-house."
These excerpts from musty records may serve as sleep- ing potions to people not fascinated by our local annals, but they are of value as throwing a flash-light upon the scenes of earlier days, and gives a more life-like picture than any rhetorical attempt.
After the disuse of the Meeting-house by the Town in
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1806, the Parish used it for its purposes on the Common till 1827, when the Parish, aided by neighboring churches and the Town, under the deft management of Captain Joseph Lloyd, removed the frame of the old house to the corner of South Common and Commercial Streets and a new cov- ering was given to the old timbers, which had originally been primeval oaks grown in the Meeting-house swamp in Lynn Woods.
In the rebuilt house Dr. Cooke preached his first sermon here on the first Sabbath of March, 1836, and was installed May 4, of the same year. Soon after, the church upon this spot was erected; but this is the story of later days, and a digression from the text.
In 1806, as well as in 1721, the irritating element which caused the First Parish to close its doors upon the Town may be traced to ecclesiastical origin.
The Quakers and the several Parishes could legislate in peace with the Parish in the old house. A more aggressive sect had come to Town and pitched its tent within sight of the Old Tunnel.
Benjamin Johnson, a prominent man - a leader in the development of the shoe business and a member of the First Church - had heard and been impressed with Metho- dist preaching in the South.
Mr. Johnson invited Jesse Lee, the Methodist preacher, to come here. Lee arrived on the fourteenth of December, 1790. Since that day Methodism has been a particularly active and vital power in Lynn. Mr. Lee set up his church - militant - in the houses of Mr. Johnson and of Mr. Enoch Mudge, the one at the north end of Market Street,
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the other at the corner of South Common and Vine Streets. One was east and the other was west of the old meeting- house, so that he flanked the Parish.
The house of Enoch Mudge stood upon the site of the edifice in which we meet to-day and which has long been your place of worship.
As Shakespeare says, "Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."
Sometimes he was permitted to occupy the meeting- house for evening meetings, and when this was refused, the Methodists, on the fourteenth day of June, 1791, began to build the first meeting-house of their society just in front of what is now Lee Hall. In twelve days from the time the timber was cut, we are told the house was ready for occupancy. It was a plain, unfinished building, 34 by 44 feet. It stood out in full view of the First Parish Meet- ing-house, and a few years later it became a convenient shelter for Town Meetings, when the First Parish ejected the Town from the Old Tunnel. Thereafter, with occa- sional meetings at the hall of Paul and Ellis Newhall, at the corner of Market and Essex Streets, it was occupied by the grace of the Methodist Society for Town purposes, till the erection of the Town House on the Common in 1814.
There are two sides to every shield.
The freemen of the Town claimed that they and their fathers had always used the meeting-house, that a tax upon the whole property had erected the building and had maintained it, and that consequently they and their suc- cessors had a prescriptive right to enjoy the same privi- leges. At the time of the controversy the First Parish
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was in a dire plight. Its pastor, Rev. Thomas Cushing Thacher, lacked the power of his predecessors; he had not the gifts of solidity and earnestness, his intellectual parts were not equal to that of the family to which he belonged. The functions of his sacred office were not appreciated by him, and secular affairs engrossed his mind .* Mr. Thach- er's ministry extended from 1794 to 1813.
His immediate predecessor, Rev. Obadiah Parsons, had faults even more inconsistent with his profession than those of Mr. Thacher.
With such guides it is not strange that Jesse Lee's ear- nestness and his fiery preaching made the new sect popular. A large portion of the First Parish went over to the Meth- odists. Even the deacons of the Parish, William Far- rington and Theophilus Hallowell, joined the new move- ment and carried away the communion plate of the Parish, probably under the impression that where the deacons were there was the church. Over the carrying away of the communion service a long contention was had, which resulted in its return; with it Deacon Farrington came back.
According to the opinion of those who remained in the Parish, those who left had abandoned the faith taught by the founders, and in forming an alien church they had for- feited their rights in the old meeting-house.
To the Parish it seemed unfair that men who worshipped elsewhere should seek to retain a secular control over the meeting-house. Hence the denial of its use by the Parish
* "But the people heard from him some excellent sermons-even some of the same that had been preached by his father before him."
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- the appointment of a joint committee - the compro- mise agreed to by the committee recognizing the right of the Parish to receive compensation for its use and the re- fusal of the Town to accept the compromise.
The Parish was weak in numbers, but by the vote of its enemies its contention was maintained that secular as well as ecclesiastical use of its property was in the Parish, and that the title to the Old Tunnel was in those who main- tained the faith of the fathers in years of disaster as well as of prosperity.
The First Parish of Lynn is the oldest organization of man, apart from the family relation, of the ancient Town, and as you properly claim, the oldest Puritan Church in America to remain practically upon its original site, and so far as a layman can say, it still professes and practises the truth as taught by the saintly Whiting, Cobbet and Shep- ard.
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THE CHAIRMAN: The maxim, "in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty - in all things charity,"* indicates the fundamental principles governing the cordial relations existing between the sister churches of our city; on whose behalf we will hear from Rev. Frank W. Padelford, Minister of the Washington Street Baptist Church.
* " In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas," is sculptured in the stone over a doorway leading into the close of Salisbury cathedral, and ascribed to Melanchthon, who used the expression in one of his theses.
THIRD MEETING HOUSE
The Old Tunnel on the new site, corner South Common and Commercial Streets, with new roof, tower, front and pews, was rededicated October 17, 1827, at 10.30 A M. In summer of 1832 it was enlarged to the present dimensions and twenty pews inserted. Sold to the Second Christian (Universalist) Society, February 14, 1837, who have occupied it ever since, having made numerous changes.
ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF SISTER CHURCHES.
Rev. FRANK W. PADELFORD, Minister of the Washington Street Baptist Church, Lynn.
I HAVE come this afternoon to bring to you on this in- teresting occasion the congratulations of your sister churches in Lynn. I can at best express, in a most inade- quate way only, our hearty feelings and good wishes. The presence of so many friends from all these churches ex- presses, more eloquently than I can hope to do, the con- gratulations of your brethren. I assure you that in a most sincere and fraternal spirit we rejoice with you to-day.
These two hundred and seventy-five years of your his- tory have witnessed marked changes in their relations, one to another, of these Christian churches. These years cover at least three periods of relationship. There was first the period of bitter animosity and hatred, when each church regarded the other as an enemy, because, as they thought, an enemy to the truth and to Christ. This first period was followed by a second, when the bitterness dis- appeared, but when each regarded the other with suspicion and coldness. Both these have now given way to a third, when we gladly recognize each other as brethren because we are children of a common Father, living a common life, seeking to do a common work. Hatred and suspicion have been displaced by hearty interest and brotherly love. We recognize now that what concerns one concerns an- other. We share each others' sorrows and we rejoice in
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