USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Franklin > History of the town of Franklin, Mass., from its settlement to the completion of its first century > Part 3
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Next to the pastor in a town is the meeting-house where his motive power is applied to the community. We must not, in our hasty ramble through the century, pass by the first meeting-house of Franklin. . The building of its meeting- house is always a great event in a town, and an occasion of original projects, of vigorous debates and shrewd financier- ing. The first topic of discussion is a site. In 1734, the precinct had so far proceeded as to ask Wrentham to come over and look at the place they have pitched upon among themselves for a meeting-house "about seventy-three rods southwest from the house of Michael Willson." He lived where the old house once occupied by William Phipps stands. They had a committee in 1737 to secure materials, and Mr. Thomas Man had offered to give an acre of land to set the house on. They are now getting in a hurry, for the preacher
* See Ecclesiastical History, Addenda.
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
has been selected, and how can he preach without an audience- room !
It is the 7th of April, 1738. Five men are sent into a cor- ner "to Debate and Consider and Perfix upon a place for Bonilding a Meeting House on and Bring it to the Precinct in one hour." Meanwhile, the rest spend that hour in vot- ing and unvoting, until they reach an apparent finality, to set the house " at the most convenientest place on that acre of Land That was laid out By Thomas Man for the use of the West Inhabitants in said Precinct." But who shall decide where this " most convenientest place " is ? Mr. Plimpton, " survair " of Medfield, is selected to bring his implements to bear on the solution ; who reports for the west corner of Man's lot, " as near as they conveniently can." But next year, May 9, 1739, a new question arises, whether this be in the exact center of the precinct, and a new surveyor is called to this problem. He and his two chainmen are put under oath to honestly survey the ground where the meeting-house must shortly lie.
May 23 he reports in writing as follows : -
To the Inhabitants of Wrentham Westerly Precinct, Gent' : These may Inform you that I the Subscriber Have Been and Measured to find the Center of sd Precinct, Messs. Decon Barber and Benj. Rockwood being chainmen, and ac- cording to what we find by Measuring on the Ground from the Northerly End to the Southerly End, and from the West- erly Side to the Easterly Side of the Same I find the Center of s Measuring to be South westerly from the Present Meet- ing house a little Beter then an Hundred Rods, where we Pitched a Stake and Made an heap of Stones.
ELEAZER FISHER, Surveyor.
He was of Dedham, the chainmen were of Medway.
This central pivot of the whole parish having been scien- tifically determined, which is said to have been in the middle of Darius Morse's mud-pond, at a cost of £11 2s., they order the committee to " hire workmen instantly, and raise, cover, inclose, and glaze the meeting-house, lay the lower floor and cover with boards and shingles," and vote £200 towards the
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cost. This summer of 1739 sees the barn-like building arise, and in September another committee are putting in the seats according to the timber provided, and "one lock and key, and bolts and latches for the doors and cants " for the gallery stairs, and also foundation for the pulpit and the pulpit stairs, and rails round the galleries and make five " pillows," --- a small number for a modern audience. The bills, presented 3d March, 1740, show that the committees had been reasonably expeditious. The final cost was £338 13s. 6d., as reported in October, 1741. The boys, too, were promptly at work, for in July, 1740, Captain Fairbanks is directed to get the win- dows mended and to prosecute the depredators.
Pari passu with the meeting-house arose the horse houses, whose long strings of successors afterwards made the Frank- lin Common so famous. They were all planted and grew on Thomas Man's acre. Among them were Richard Puffer's " small diner house," and Isaac Heton and Dr. Jones had a " small noon house."
With the sanctuary finished - with a pew on each side of the pulpit, a deacon's seat in front and long benches filling the rest of the house -next comes the ticklish question of seating the audience. Gravely a special committee count the years and measure the tax-bills of the fathers, and so as- sign their places " according to age and estate," as they were instructed. Some wish to build pews at their own ex- pense, but the precinct resolutely refuses assent. The place and not the kind of seat is sufficient graduation ; for the straight bench is the throne of democracy.
Of this oldest real meeting-house no sketch, or picture, or ideal survives, save that I remember to have seen some of its windows in an old house. The sashes were two feet square, with five-inch panes of glass set diagonally in lead, as the fash- ion then was. The meeting-house stood on the slight hill north of the present Catholic church, in a surrounding girth of pitch pines. It was guarded by platoons of horse-sheds and small dinner-houses, where the forefathers of the hamlet
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shared their lunch and the mothers nursed their infants in the hour's intermission of the Sabbath noons.
This house was subjected to occasional modifications as the congregation increased and the taste changed. The ob- jection to pews yielded gradually. In 1755, Capt. John Goldsbury is allowed " to build a small pew joining to the pew left of the pulpit, at his own charge," and it is liked so well that in March following they vote to alter the meeting- house generally, building seats along the front of the galle- ries, convenient for men to sit on, and also hind seats in the galleries. The seats under the galleries are converted into pew-lots, and " such men as it may fall to by lot in order of age and estate may build there if they will, provided if they leave town the pew shall revert to the precinct." The meet- ing-house, however, is gradually aging in spite of repairs and frequent mendings of broken windows. But Michael Willson, the first sexton, keeps it as tidily as he can until Uriah Will- son (his son) takes the broom, with occasional respite from Joshua Daniels, Jonathan Archer, and Elisha Partridge, un- til the ancient sanctuary is left to sleep undisturbed in its dust on its little hill. For the precinct, getting ready now to emerge into a township, begins to plan about the freedom- suit of a new meeting-house to wear on assuming its coming dignity of a town.
But before we quite leave the old sanctuary, we must step within long enough to listen to what was called the old way of singing. We take up one of the few books - an "Old Bay Psalm book," which has been used since 1640 in all the churches in the colony. The eight tunes at the end are from Ravenscroft's collection of 1618. The chorister starts the tune with his pitch pipe. The congregation follow, each in his own fashion and at his own pace, according to the old style in which his grandmother sang the tune in Wrentham or Dedham half a century ago. All sing the same part with an energy begotten of facing northeasters and felling forest trees and driving strings of oxen among their stumps. No two persons sing alike, and the singing consequently sounds,
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as Rev. Thomas Walter said, " like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time."* In one sense it is like the voice of many waters, and this is called the old way of singing.
It had already become a grievance to the ministers who wished to make melody in their hearts unto the Lord, and strenuous efforts had been begun to bring the people back to some harmony of voice, as well as of sentiment. Hence we appreciate this emphatic vote of the precinct June 26, 1738, immediately after the gathering of the young church, viz. :- " To sing no other tunes than are Pricked Down in our for- mer Psalm Books which were Printed between Thirty and forty years Agoe, and To Sing Them as They are Prickt down in them as Near as they can." This was a Precinct blow at the old way of singing. The older people remon- strated; but the Precinct refused, in September, "to case those that were inclined to sing the old way." The church, March 8, 1738-9, voted not to sing in the old way, but by rule, i. e., according to note ; and they chose Joseph Whiting to set the tune in the church. This action of the church, so curiously put in the negative form, has a key to its signifi- cance in a solemn query raised, the record says, "toward the close" of the meeting. As it proved the seed of a large and slow harvest it claims mention. The query is, "to see what notice the church will take of one of the brethren's striking into a pitch of the tune unusually raised February 18th." After considerable consultation, the record says, and there well might be, for it was like the spot of Paul's shipwreck, the place where two seas met, it was voted : -
WHEREAS, our brother David Pond, as several of our brethren, viz. : David Jones, Ebenezer Hunting, Benjamin Rockwood. Jr., Aaron Haws, and Michael Metcalf apprehend, struck into a pitch of the tune on February 18th, in the pub- lic worship in the forenoon, raised above what was set : after most of the congregation, as is thought, kept the pitch for three lines. and after our pastor had desired them that had
* Hood's History of Music in N. E., p. 84.
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raised it to fall to the pitch that was set to be suitable, decent, or to that purpose; the question was put, whether the church apprehends this our brother David Pond's so do- ing to be disorderly ; and it passed in the affirmative, and David Pond is suspended until satisfaction is given.
But David Pond was frozen over by this cooling of his high musical ardor, nor would he be thawed into any melting confession. Though the church sent the tender of a refer- ence, he would not meet them. They invite him to a special prayer meeting, but he will not bend. They vote a solemn admonition. He proposes a council ; that declined he calls an ex-parte council, which is not acknowledged. Then he goes into the second church in Medway, which asks questions about his case and gets a distinct letter in reply, which is followed by a second and more emphatic about harboring malcontents, and a third, too, with replies from Medway . all unsatisfactory. At last, in September, 1751, over thir- teen years after that high pitching of the tune, the warmth of a continuous interest melts the icy barriers, and this Pond flows forth in a confession (12th January, 1751-2) and the Medway church joins in sundry acknowledgments (14th February, 1752), and thus the discord is brought down to concert pitch again and the hymn flows on.
But those longings for singing the old way were not con- fined to one sturdy pro-advocate. The battlefield was staked out at once (May 18, 1739) by a vote of the church, " that the man that tunes the Psalm in the congregation be limited till further direction to some particular tunes, and the tunes limited are Canterbury, London, Windsor, St. David's, Cam- bridge, Short 100th and 148th Psalm tunes, and Benjamin Rockwood, Jr., to tune the Psalm." A movement, 30th of January, 1745, to enlarge this musical area was promptly re- pelled. They will have only a moderate new way, even though when Benjamin Rockwood cannot sing for the fail- ure of his voice, and they choose Jabez Fisher in his place, he declines because the catalogne of tunes is too short for him to enter among them. But this refusal begets thought ;
1
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and four years' practice has so worn out the eight permitted notes that (April 5, 1749) the church takes off the limitation. They also dismiss Joseph Whiting as chorister and put his pitch-pipe into the mouth of Barnabas Metcalf. With an un- limited range for tunes, the hymn now goes along like a flow- ing brook, and -
" Chatters over stony ways In little sharps and trebles "
-for aught I know until this day.
Meanwhile both church and precinct have another anxious care on hand. Their pastor's health has been failing, and with tender helpfulness they have eased his waning strength of pulpit labors by generous contributions, until his decease in 1744 .* Now comes that most trying experience of hearing candidates to select a successor. For the modern expedient of a make-believe, acting pastor has not occurred to them, and they sit patiently down to hear and scrutinize whomever the precinct may bring before them. In succession come Aaron Putnam, Jason Haven, Stephen Holmes, Thomas Brooks, Mr. Norton, Joseph Manning whom they ask to stay, but he declines ; Messrs. Parsons, Goodhue, Phillips Payson, who declines their call ; Jesse Root, Nathan Holt, who will not tarry though invited ; John Eals, Mr. Gregory, and Caleb Barnam. He, the fourteenth, is besought by 102 votes to bring their uncertainty to an end, and £133 settlement and £70 salary are laid before him as a temptation. After some months of deliberation he accepts, and, June 4, 1760, the second minister of this precinct is settled by the elders and messengers of the churches in Danbury, Ct., the two in Medway, in Attleboro, Wrentham, Walpole, two in Mendon and Upton.
The exercises were : Introductory prayer by Rev. A. Frost, of Second Church, Mendon (now Milford) ; sermon by Rev. Phillips Payson, of Walpole ; installing prayer by Rev. Nathan Bucknam, of First Church, Medway ; charge by Rev. Joseph
* For further notice of Rev. Mr. Haven see Ecclesiastical History.
3
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN.
Dorr, of Mendon; right hand of fellowship by Rev. Joseph Bean, of Wrentham.
The church had voted " to conduct themselves agreeable to the sentiments and advice of the Convention of Ministers of this Province in a paper printed June, 1759, for the Reformation of Disorders on the Days of Ordination of Min- isters."
Mr. Barnam's pastorate lasted less than eight years. He was dismissed March 6, 1768, and was resettled in Taunton, whence he went as chaplain into the Continental army and died of the camp disease at Pittsfield, Aug. 23, 1776. But his brief pastorate in Franklin was full of incidents, debates and differences - not the least among them being the war of the hymn books.
This may have arisen with the subsidence of the pastoral problem. But come it did even before the ordination, in the guise of two church votes April 15, 1760, first to sing Dr. Watts' version of the psalms, and second, " the pastor may not refuse to lead the church to vote as above mentioned." There is to be no Connecticut Consociationism in this church; and to settle it they vote, "when any member wants to bring up a business which the pastor thinks improper, if he cannot satisfy the person, he shall bring it to the church, and they shall decide whether to appoint a hearing." Such a vote indicates that the sides are forming for a fight over the new hymn book. As nearly as we can read the banners in the smoke of the conflict, there are three parties in the field - Old Bay psalm book, Tate and Brady's version, and Dr. Watt's ver- sion. Between them the conflict wavers with varying sign. Dec. 10, 1761, the church vote to " sing Tate and Brady's ver- sion, together with the hymns bound in the same volume, till 1st of March next." (This was the new edition of 1741). April 28, this time is prolonged indefinitely. But on the 21st of June comes this volley from the parish :-
Voted, that the parish make use of that version of the psalms in their public worship on the Lord's day and at other
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times as occasion shall require (no surreptitious uses), which was made use of in this place, before the Rev. Mr. Barnam had his invitation to settle with this people ; commonly called the old version of the psalms composed for the use and ben- efit of the congregations of New England. 11 35844
The clerk is instructed to wait upon Mr. Barnam with this vote, desiring that he will adhere to and conform with it. Nine days after, June 30, the church replies by a vote to give the parish the choice of Watts, Tate and Brady, or a council. September 6, the parish refuses either. Nov. 28, 1763, about a year after this refusal, the church sends, as a flag of truce, the acceptance of a council to sit on this edge of dispute, com- posed of the Medway first, Wrentham and Mendon second churches, if the parish will pay the expenses ; which the par- ish accepts December 26, with this sharp definition of the points in arbitration - whether to sing Dr. Watts' version of the psalms, or Tate and Brady's version, together with the hymns bound with them. The Old Bay psalm book appears to have withdrawn, disabled, from the field. April 17, 1764, the council meets, in which the two churches in Medway, in Walpole, Sutton, Wrentham and Milford are represented by six pastors and ten delegates ; which council after sharp re- proofs to each side, advises them to sing the version of Dr. Watts in part, together with our New England version in part. Thus the hymn books are relegated to the arena to en- dure the working of the law of "the survival of the fittest."
The church muses upon this result from April until No- vember, and then asks the council to come together again and explain their meaning. They re-meet in June, expound, and the church accepts the exposition on the 4th of July, 1765, by a vote of forty-eight to fifteen, just eleven years before the Declaration of our National Independence. Some of the parish, still in the fog, try to revive the issue in their meet- ing of January next, but the parish will not open it; and, so far as appears, it has remained practically shut unto the pres- ent day, Dr. Watts having had the field for nearly ninety
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years, until the Puritan hymn book, born in Mendon Asso- ciation, crowded him onto the shelf of antiques.
We are now, in our hasty trip down the past, coming into the outer edge of the storm-cloud of the Revolution. Rest- lessness is everywhere - in church and in state, in town and in country. This western precinct is full of uneasiness and debate, to which we cannot stop to listen. But the people are not disposed to neglect home interests, although the French and Indian wars, the depopulation of Acadia and the encroachments of the British crown appeal so earnestly to their attention. They have not forgotten the hymn which they learned at their mother's knee -
" Whatever brawls disturb the street There should be peace at home; Where sisters dwell and brothers meet Quarrels should never come,"
and therefore they sct themselves to composing their disturb- ances from the hymn book war, the complaints against the ministry and other ecclesiastical differences which have been developed thereby. It is a troublous time, but there are he- roic men to control it, and they set themselves down to the difficult problem.
First of all, the empty pulpit must be filled with a pastor. The committee present one preacher after another, some of whom fail to meet with favor, and some are called, but - such is the discouraging aspect of things - decline the invi- tation. Of those so called are, Mr. Elijah Fitch, but he went to Hopkinton ; Mr. Nathan Perkins, but he chose West Hart- ford, Ct. Disheartened by these failures, they ponder if the meeting-house - now, in 1770, over thirty years old and too small for the large congregation, as well as antique in fash- ion - may not be a hindrance to their success, by indicating a spiritual negligence. The result is that in 1772, February 3, they detail five men " to consult upon the Conveniences and Ill Conveniences of Enlarging and Repairing their meeting- house, and to Draw a plan thereof and report."
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The result is that at the meeting of the parish on March 9, they vote "to Build a new meeting-house so Soon as it may be effected with Common Prudence and the circumstances of the people," and send out five men to search for that mova- ble north pole of the congregation - " the Senter of the pre- cinct." These five failing to find it, in April fifteen men, more sharp-eyed, perhaps, are delegated to help them. Twenty such men as Franklin can furnish (so quick at this time to detect theological differences and measure metres) will hardly miss the precise point, though the search may take all summer. September 7, they report the most commodious place to be "about eighty rods southerly from where the meeting-house now stands, between the two roads leading from the meeting-house to Mr. Pond's and the burying- ground." This report is accepted, and a committee is chosen to see on what terms the land can be bought and convenient roads obtained to the new site.
While this question of a new meeting-house is thus favor- ably progressing, a small young man with a thin voice has been bashfully essaying to fill the pulpit in the old house on the hill. He came from Yale College in 1767, and has, since his approbation as a minister in October, 1769, been preach- ing in New York State and in New Hampshire. He has de- clined a call to settle in Campton, N. H., and may be else- where, because he feels himself " a speckled bird " for his positive opinions. But somehow the committee of supply have heard of him and ask him to occupy their vacant pul- pit. He, too, has heard of the second precinct in Wrentham, and that it contains two very vigorous and bellicose parties. He cannot hope, as he afterwards said, that " nobody but little Nat Emmons " can unite them.
But the night before he reaches town, he dreams that while riding along he sees a quail start out from the bushes on the right side, and anon another quail venture from the left side of the way. Thinking, What if I can catch both of them, he creeps softly towards them with his three-cornered hat in his
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hand and claps it successfully over both .* Encouraged by this omen, for he always preferred to see the new moon. over his right shoulder, he comes one Saturday night to. this bellicose parish, and on Sunday morning into its little meeting-house among the pines, wondering where a con- gregation is to come from when hardly a house is in sight. But when they gather on foot and horse-back and by carriage- loads and fill it to overflowing, to listen so sharply and shrewdly to his clear-cut and logical sentences, his two quails have changed to more inspiriting and difficult game. How- ever, the little self-diffident young man so well succeeds that on Nov. 30, 1772, the church invite him, by a vote of thirty -. two out of thirty-four present, to become their pastor ; and the precinct, fourteen days after, give a hearty amen to the choice.
April 21, 1773, Nathanael Emmons is settled as third pas- tor of this people. The service was, like that of both his predecessors, held outside the meeting-house, in a valley west of the present Catholic church ; so that he was literally, as he said, " ordained not over but under the people."
With the settlement of Dr. Emmons, whose ministry ex -- tended down to the memory of so many of us, and of whose character and influence as a master in theology so much has been written, and so ably, I may, though reluctantly, omit from this address any farther account of onr ecclesiastical history, referring you to the book to be published for its sub -. sequent phases. I have presented so much of it because for the first century of the country church, precinct, and town. were practically identical, and their history one.
The ministerial question being settled with brightening prospects of permanency, which is really the central interest of a New England town, we may take a hasty glance at its civil progress.
The spirit of self-dependence which secured the separate parochial organization in 1738, found itself as much incom -- moded in going to Wrentham for town business as it had
* See Professor Park's Memoir of Emmons. Works. Vol. I.
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been for religious worship. As early as 1740, a motion was made in this precinct to petition Wrentham to become a town by themselves, but there was not outside sympathy enough to carry it. The next year there was a movement to make a new town out of slices from Wrentham and Medway. This also failed. The next spring, in 1742, it was proposed to build a town from the corners of Wrentham, Medway, Belling- ham, and Holliston. This met a like fate. A movement for a new precinct at the northwest, in 1747, was stopped, as well as another, in 1748, at the north end. These abortive mno- tions for a narrower area were too many to mention. But March 4, 1754, a more serious step was adopted by the pre- cinct, to petition both Wrentham and the General Court to be set off into a separate district, and a committee was chosen to engineer the project. But Wrentham simply refused the petition, without condescending to describe its purport on its records. Thus baffled in every movement for a district town- ship, and full of other matters difficult of adjustment and expensive, aroused also by the Stamp Act and other Lord North's vagaries, the people concluded to bide their time and go to Wrentham to vote or stay at home. So the town ques- tion had rest until the exigencies of the War of Independence called for still more frequent and energetic gatherings. Then it came up in earnest. In the war meetings necessary - seven in that current year of 1777 - it was a burden to travel from five to eight miles to Wrentham, and the population had become large enough to justify the civil separation of the two religious precincts. Therefore, Dec. 29, 1777, a petition is addressed to Wrentham for " liberty to be set off into a dis- trict township, according to grant of court that they were at first incorporated into a precinct, with a part of said town's money and stocks." Dea. Jabez Fisher, Esq., Jonathan Met- calf, Samuel Sethbridge, Asa Whiting, Dr. John Metcalf, Jos. Hawes, and Capt. John Boyd, chief men of the precinct, are put in charge of the matter. Wrentham responds, January 26, by adopting certain terms, and sends a committee of nine
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