USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Freetown > History of the town of Freetown, Massachusetts : with an account of the Old Home Festival, July 30th, 1902 > Part 3
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" The Narragansett Church," in Kingston, Rhode Island, the foremost representative in this region of that Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which was spending money profusely in the attempt to secure a foothold for "his order" in New England. This frank bid for a subsidy, with the offer of a church building, seems, strangely enough, to have met with no response.
The reader will have been impressed throughout this dreary history with the fact that the church business was carried on in town meetings, and recorded in the town records. This was the natural consequence of the vicious principle of the Massachusetts government, as distin- guished from the more liberal constitution of Plymouth and of Connecticut. By providing that the electoral fran- chise was to be conferred only on communicant members of the church, it had doubtless honestly intended to ennoble and spiritualize the civil state. The actual result, as in this instance, was rather to secularize the church. When the voters of the town and the members of the church were presumably the same persons, it would have been a mere scruple of formalism to insist that the town meeting should adjourn, and then come to order again as a church meet- ing. But the merger of the two meetings into one had the inevitable effect to make the church business a department of town politics.
It is not in the least strange, neither is it discredit- able to the fathers of the town that these forty years of faction and unrest should have led their minds, by reac- tion, not only to the principle of which the Baptists were the strenuous champions, of the non-interference of the State in spiritual affairs, but also to the Quaker protest against a paid ministry. The affair with Mr. Craighead was.practically the end, for a quarter-century thereafter, of efforts to settle a pastor of the town.
But it would be a mistake to infer that there was here a break of continuity in the church history of the town. When official ministrations ceased in the town meeting-
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house, the meetings of Friends began to be frequented, and within ten years after the stormy close of the Craig- head pastorate, a Quaker meeting-house was built (1725 ?) and seems to have become the real religious centre and parish church of the town. "For at least half a century," it is alleged, " the Friends, or Quakers, were numerically the largest worshiping congregation in town, embracing the men of first minds, most money and best manners."* The meeting-house was built, a few miles north of the old town church near Mother's Brook, "near what is still called Quaker Hill, not far distant from the bleachery, and just across the street from what is known as the South School House." But the work of the Quaker meeting, interesting and valuable as it was, had no seed in itself after its kind. After a generation or two, the deserted chapel was removed to the northern edge of the town, where a more recent building now occupies the place of it, and is still used for worship by a congregation having few or no Quaker characteristics.
At last, in the year 1747, it seemed as if a better day was dawning for the Freetown church. September 30th of that year took place the first distinct and formal organi- zation of a church, according to the order which the New England fathers had drawn from their studies of the New Testament, and two months later-December 2nd-was ordained to the office of pastor a man whose name deserves to be held in loving remembrance by later generations, Silas Brett. He was at this time about thirty years old. He was born in Bridgewater, had studied at Yale College, had been a student of theology with the pastor of his native town, and before coming to Freetown had preached for a time at Easton. Many a foreign missionary has gone to his field with less evidence of the martyr spirit than was shown by Silas Brett when he came to re-open for
*E. W. Peirce in "History of Bristol County," p 297.
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DEACON BENJAMIN BURT.
SINIA W. KING.
RESIDENCE OF DEACON BENJAMIN BURT.
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Christian worship the deserted and ruinous church by Mother's Brook. Three days before his ordination as pastor, he subscribed and caused to be engrossed upon the town records a formal covenant, in which he bound him- self, thus: "That from the day of my solemn separation to the pastoral office in said church, and for and during the full term of time of my continuance in that office in said church, I will neither directly nor indirectly take advantage by the laws of this province to get a salary set- tled on me in the town of Freetown, but look for and expect my support by the free-will offering of the people." It is easy to refer this new quickening of church life, and this act of faith on the part of the new pastor, to that high tide of spiritual earnestness that began at Northampton about the year 1740, and is known as "The Great Awakening." One of the early fruits of Mr. Brett's min- istry was the gift by three of the townsmen, under date of April 13, 1748, of a farm of fifty-three acres, near the church, "for the use of the ministry, and for the benefit of the people in that part of the town forever." But there are small proofs that this example of liberality had any considerable following. The town was persistent in refus- ing all aid to the church, even so much as keeping in repair the meeting-house, which was its own property. Seven years after Mr. Brett's settlement it was voted (March 18, 1754) "that those that are disposed to repair the town's meeting-house so as to render it fit to meet in for worship, that they may have the liberty to repair the said house on their own cost and charge, and not at the charge of the town." Patient Mr. Brett pursued his course from year to year, supported by the glebe farm and a little stipend from the most ancient of Protestant missionary societies -- that which was organized under the patronage of Cromwell in aid of the labors of Eliot and his fellow- workers, and which, being reorganized after the Restora- tion, was able to make a small appropriation for Mr.
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Brett's preaching and pastoral work among the dwindling families of Pocasset Indians near the Watuppa Pond. But it is evident that the high hopes of prosperity for the Freetown Church, which had been expressed in glowing language in the ordination sermon by Mr. Porter of Bridgewater, were never fulfilled. The volume of records so diligently kept by the pastor gives proof of his fidelity and devotion. But at the close of nearly thirty years, his letter of resignation, dated February 24th, 1776, recounted with unaffected pathos the hopes with which he had entered on his work, and his " waiting with long patience for those fruits which would have been more precious to him than the fruits of the earth are to the husbandman," and how, when doubts had arisen whether it was his duty to continue his labors in so barren a field, with much study and prayer to learn the way of duty, he "could not see his way clear to leave his people, and therefore resolved to go on with his work, and endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And though since that, some small appearances of success in my work have repeatedly revived my former hopes and encouraged me to renew my labors and the exercises of patience, yet repeated disap- pointments, the want of support, the prevailing of secta- rian principles, and especially the public disputes of the country, in which Freetown has had an unhappy share, have brought me to think it my duty to ask a dismission from my pastoral office among you."
The stormy church meeting which brought matters to this crisis had been held some fourteen months before (Lord's Day, December 11th, 1774), when
" After the last prayer, a resolve of the Provincial Congress at Cambridge, recommending that Thursday, the fifteenth of December, be observed as a day of Thanksgiving, to render thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings we enjoy, and at the same time to humble themselves before God on account of their sins, &c., was publicly read. This done, Col. Gilbert rose and objected against observing that day. I told him I pro-
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posed to take the minds of the assembly as soon as I was ready. I then told the brethren of the church that if it was their minds to receive the advice of the Congress, and observe the day recommended for those purposes, I desired they would signify it by holding up their hands. Esqr. Brightman interrupted us by alleging that I told them I proposed to take the minds of the assembly, bnt I now called upon my brethren only. I replied I thought it proper to take the mind of the church first, and then renewed my call to the brethren, and they unani- mously held up their hands. Then I told the assembly I desired all such from sixteen years old and upwards who were willing to join with the church in keeping the day recommended for the foresaid purposes, to signify it by holding up their hands, and a minor number did so. Upon this some cried out it was not a clear vote, and Abiel Henry told me he hoped I would call for a contrary vote. I replied nothing as I remem- ber. Col. Gilbert moved that the next Thursday seven nights might be the day. I replied: If any of them had a mind to keep that day too, I had nothing to object, but the church voted to keep the day recommended by the Congress. Col. Gilbert alleged that the Congress was an unlawful assembly, and that if we received their advice and observed the day recommended, we adopted all their resolves. I replied I did not think it a proper time and place to debate those matters, and the assembly being in a great commotion, Col. Gilbert moved that it should be put to vote whether they would keep Thursday se'nnight as a day of thanksgiving. Accordingly I proposed to those that remained in the meeting-house that such as were disposed to keep Thursday se'nnight as a day of public thanksgiving and humiliation should signify it by holding up their hands, and a number of those that didn't hold up their hands for keeping next Thursday, held up their hands, but whether a major or minor I couldn't tell. This done, they were in motion to go out of the meeting-house, till I told them I hoped they would not run away without the blessing, upon which they stopped, and the blessing was given.
In such a storm as this it is no wonder that the frail little organization, which, in the fairest weather, had much ado to keep afloat, made shipwreck. Good Silas
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-
CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND PARSONAGE.
CONGREGATIONAL PARSONAGE.
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Brett carried his gray hairs and his children with him to Easton, where he died in 1791, at the age of 75. Col. Gilbert, his antagonist, took refuge in the British provinces, and his property at the center of the village was confiscated. In the distractions of the War of Inde- pendence and the agitated period which followed, the flock was scattered as sheep having no shepherd. But these vicissitudes only serve to illustrate the inextinguishable vitality of the church. The meetings for worship had not long ceased in the old meeting-house by Mother's Brook, when other congregations began to organize themselves to provide for the needs of the people. Peace had not yet been restored to the country, when (February, 1781) was established a church in the southern part of the town, which is now the First Baptist Church of Fall River. At a still earlier date, apparently, a church was gathered at the southern edge of Assonet village, and one at East Freetown. It need surprise no one, in view of the past history, that all three of the congregations which suc- ceeded to the old parish church were identified with that denomination which is distinguished in all American his- tory as the foremost champion of the principle of the mutual independence of church and State-the Baptists. The congregation at Assonet built its house of worship (in the years 1793-6) on a sightly hill-top, where the line of its foundations may still be traced. And here seems to have been the principal center of the town's religious life, within the rigid lines of doctrine and discipline that then characterized all Baptist churches. But about the year 1807 a remarkable change took place, which may be referred to a combination of influences. The whole coun- try was feeling the "more abundant life " that pulsated through all the churches in that great revival at the open- ing of the nineteenth century, which has been called " The Second Awakening;" the reaction from the stren- uous and narrow dogmatism of the dynasty of the Edwardean theologians was rising to its high tide in the
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Unitarianism of Boston, and making itself felt even at this distance from that centre, and with these remoter influ- ences was joined the influence of a powerful personality - that of the beloved and revered pastor of the church, Philip Hathaway. Under his leading nearly the entire church came to renounce their adhesion to the tenets of an exaggerated Calvinism, and to the exclusiveness of the Baptist fellowship, and to range themselves with "The Christian Connection," which was just then beginning to crystallize about different nuclei in different parts of the
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CHRISTIAN CHURCH, EAST FREETOWN.
country. The churches of this Connection in New Eng- land differed from the Congregational churches about them, in their protest against doctrinal tests as conditions of church fellowship, and against the requirement of a col- lege education in all candidates for the ministry. From · the Congregationalists of the present day they differ in no definable particular, except that of being organized into a distinct sect. The current setting toward the new " Con- nection " was so strong as to take with it both the Baptist Churches in East Freetown.
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At Assonet there were visible and material signs of spiritual vitality. The Baptist meeting-house, which for a dozen years had been occupied in an unfinished state, was now completed with lath and plaster, and simulta- neously those who cherished the memory or the tradition of the old parish church and of the godly ministry of Silas
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BUILT 1809
Brett began to bestir themselves. Many things had taken place in the thirty years since Silas Brett had withdrawn in sorrow from the scene of his disappointed hopes. Peace had settled down upon the once distracted town, and with peace had come prosperity. In 1803 the thriving vil-
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lage of Fall River had been set off as a separate town, and the reason which had fixed the meeting house at Mother's Brook as central to the town had ceased to exist. There could have been little left but a ruin of the poor shell of a building which for nearly a century had passed through such vicissitudes of use and neglect ; consequently, when the revival of the church led to the erection of a new house of worship in the year 1809, there could be no hesitation in placing it at the natural centre of the newly delimited town-the " Four Corners" of Assonet. As there must have been small remains of the old meeting-house, so there could have been but few survivors of the little com- pany of twenty-one persons who constituted the church at the time of Mr. Brett's dismission. The church and society which undertook the work of building, was practi- cally a new organization, and we cannot but admire the zeal and self-denial that disposed their scanty number to undertake a church building, which, in point of costliness and of architectural pretension, was so far in advance of anything previously attempted in the town.
The Christian community of the town of Freetown was thus organized for Christian work, worship and fel- lowship, substantially in the form which continues to this day. The two hamlets of East Freetown were provided with chapels, and the village of Assonet was doubly pro- vided. Some of the more notable facts in the external history of the church since this time may be thus briefly stated.
About the year 1832 the old Baptist meeting-house that had stood for thirty-four years, and for twenty-five of them had been occupied by the " Christian " congregation, was superseded by the neat and commodious structure that still stands close alongside the foundations of its prede - cessor.
In the year 1868, on the occasion of the presentation to the North Church by Dr. Nathan Durfee, of Fall River, of an organ of thirty-eight stops, an addition of twenty
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feet was made to the length of the church, providing thus an organ-room and choir loft, and in the basement a con- ference room ; the galleries were lowered, and other im- provements were effected.
In 1895 the South Church underwent extensive im- provement and embellishment, and a parsonage was built.
In 1896 the old Friends' Meeting-House, which many years before had been moved from "Quaker Hill" almost to the northern boundary of the town, was torn down, and the present building erected.
In 1901 the quaint mansion known as the Captain Rufus Bacon place, was bought for a parsonage to the North Church, and largely repaired.
The following is an incomplete list of those who have served the town in one connection or another, in the min- istry of the gospel :
IN THE TOWN CHURCH.
1704-1706. WILLIAM WAY.
1710-1711. JOSEPH AVERY.
1713-1715. JONATHAN DODSON.
1716 ----. THOMAS CRAIGHEAD.
1747-1776. SILAS BRETT.
IN THE ASSONET BAPTIST CHURCH.
(Incorporated by Act of General Court, June 23, 1797, but
Earlier Organized.)
DAVID SIMMONS. -1807. PHILIP HATHAWAY.
IN THE ASSONET " CHRISTIAN" CHURCH. (Organized May, 1807.)
1807-1821. PHILIP HATHAWAY.
1824-1832. JAMES TAYLOR.
1833-1834. WILLIAM COE.
1834-1837. ABNER JONES.
1838 -. GARDNER DEAN.
1838-1839. DANA BRADFORD.
1840-1844. JAMES TAYLOR.
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REV. P. A. CANADA.
1844-1847. JAMES S. MAXWELL.
1849-1851. SAMUEL S. WHITE.
FREDERICK PLUMMER.
1>>2-1723. 1854-1856. 1856-1555. 1861-1865. 1>65-1867. 1867-1869. 1869-1870.
ALBERT G. COMINGS.
GEORGE W. KELTON.
N. S. CHADWICK.
ABRAHAM JACKSON.
A. A. WILLIAMS.
JOHN BURBANK.
R. B. ELDRIDGE.
1870-1872. 1872-1874.
(). J. HANCOCK.
W. G. WADE.
1874 -- 1874-1875. 1×75-1592.
W. O. SWEET.
BENJAMIN S. BATCHELOR.
1892-1895.
ABRAHAM L. BEAN.
1895-1899. G. A. CONIBEAR.
1599_
P. A. CANADA.
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REV. A G DUNCAN.
REV. FRANCIS H. BOYNTON.
IN THE NORTH CHURCH, ASSONET.
(Constituted by Council, April 26, 1807).
1807 -- CURTIS COE.
1809- LUTHER LELAND.
1810-1811. CALVIN PARK.
1812-
GEORGE S. WHITE.
1815
PHILIP COLBY.
1819-1820. CHARLES NICHOLS.
1820-
OTIS LANE.
1822
JAMES GURNEY.
1827
JOSEPH P. TYLER.
1829-1836.
STETSON RAYMOND.
1837-1845.
E. W. ROBINSON.
1845-1846. CHARLES CHAMBERLAIN.
1848-1853. SAMUEL WOODBURY.
1853-1855. JOHN E. CORY.
1856-1867. ABEL G. DUNCAN.
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1867-1871. FRANCIS H. BOYNTON.
1871-1872. GEORGE W. HATHAWAY.
1872-1874. WILLIAM H. CUTLER.
1875-1876. W. A. TENNEY.
1877-1878.
WILL C. WOOD.
1879-1880. F. F. WILLIAMS.
1880-1889. GEORGE F. WALKER.
1890-1891.
J. J. SPENCER.
1898-1901. WILLIAM F. WARREN.
1901 ----- LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON.
>
RESIDENCE OF MRS SAMUEL S. BARNABY.
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CLAMBAKE GROVE.
THE ASSONET CLAMBAKE.
HISTORY of Freetown would hardly be complete with- out some account of the Assonet clambake, given for so many years under the auspices of the Christian Church Society as almost to be reckoned in among its institutions. The idea of a bake as a means of raising money for the church originated with Swansea, and Assonet was the first to follow her lead. The first bake here was held in 1866, and the thirty-fourth and last in 1899. When the bake was proposed, there were many elderly conservatives to prophesy failure, but gradually patience and youthful zeal won the day. Willing helpers cleared Thresher's Grove, dug the clams, and supplied the vegetables from their own gardens. About three hundred dinner tickets were sold this first year, and the sale steadily increased until one year as many as eighteen hundred seats were taken. The average number sold was one thousand, the supplies necessary for this number being estimated at sixty bushels of clams, four barrels of sweet potatoes, three hundred pounds of fish, one thousand ears of corn, and two hun-
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dred pounds of dressing. The dimensions of the bake were twenty-five feet by eight feet. Three cords of wood heated the stones, which were then covered with rock- weed and canvas.
There were other means for raising money on the grounds : a fancy table furnished by the Sewing Society, an ice cream booth, and cake, candy, flower, sandwich and coffee tables. These were common features of every bake. A variation appeared one year - 1868, in the shape
B F. AIKEN.
of The Assonet Messenger, a four-page sheet, one-fourth of it reading matter, dealing with everything from praise of the clambake to the description of a Chinese wedding, the remaining space taken up by advertisements of Taunton, Fall River and Providence firms, friends of the bake pro- moters. An unexpected diversion was furnished in 1869 by the September gale. Many of the guests found their way home again in spite of falling trees and toppling chim- neys. The What Cheer, however, could not return to
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Providence until the next day, but lay all night tossing off Cudworth's Wharf, while her passengers found impromptu lodging and entertainment in the homes of the villagers.
Although in most respects the Assonet clambake was like any similar institution, it was unique in this, that it came to be the day of the year for meeting old friends and renewing old associations. For many years it was Assonet's Old Home Festival, looked forward to with
THOMAS LEEBURN.
eagerness, and remembered with pleasure. In time there grew to be a lessening of interest and a falling off in attendance, and finally the bake was discontinued alto- gether. The reasons for its decline are not far to seek. Many of its old patrons had either died or moved away from this section of the country, and secondly, competition had entered in to make it impossible that any but the fittest clambake should survive. The ubiquitous trolley- car and the frequent park and shore resorts, with their daily menu of baked clams, have come off conquerors.
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SCHOOL HISTORY.
BY MRS. PAUL M. BURNS.
URING the colonial and the provincial periods, the power to select teachers and to regulate the schools was vested in the town as a corporation, and not in any particular officer of it. From the year 1683 -the date of the incorporation of Freetown as a town-until 1702, we find no records of school affairs, but in the latter year Robert Durfee, at a town meeting, was chosen town's agent, to obtain a man " to dispense the gospel and teach the children readin and ritin." Two years later William Way accepted the trust, serving as minister and school- master until 1707, when, by vote of the town, he was dis- missed. Subsequent ministers must have served as schoolmasters, though no mention is made of the fact in the town records.
May 15, 1718, the next mentioned date, the town " mayde choyce of Jacob Hatheway to seek for a school- master." In October of the same year " Thomas roberts " was allowed thirty-six pounds for one year's ser- vice " at three several places: Walter Chase's, at or near John Howland's, public meeting-house." Roberts and the town did not agree, and at a meeting held February 14, 1721, it was voted " to seek a new schoolmaster." The next few years it would seem that the matter of education was neglected, as there were repeated actions taken at various town meetings, but nothing definite done. In 1722 the town voted "to erect two schoolhouses at the middle of each half of the town from meeting-house or
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center." School was to be three times removed during the year : "First, at meeting-house, second, lower part of town, third, upper part of town." In 1727 these two buildings were sold at public auction, one for two dollars, the other for five dollars. We next learn that in 1725 William Gaige was employed to teach school for one year for thirty-two pounds, he to provide his own board. During the three following years his successor, William Caswell, taught, with an increase in salary of six pounds. July 10, 1729, it was voted to build two schoolhouses. No record can be found of their locations. When we take into consideration the fact that at this time-1730-there were fewer than eighty families in all the wide extent from Quequechan Falls to Stacey's Brook, and then, fur- ther, think of this territory as a vast wilderness infested with wild animals, we shall not be surprised that children were not sent to school, or that the town was repeatedly indicted for not "having a schoolmaster as the law directs."
Ephraim Tisdale, in 1745, sold to the town " land with house thereon, situated between said Tisdale's home and Sonet Ould Bridge for 100 pounds old tenor." Tis- dale was to furnish convenient seats and tables, and it was agreed that it should be finished to the "turning of ye key." The location of this building was in the village, a little south of the fountain, and on the opposite side of the street. It stood for twenty-seven years, and was then destroyed by fire. Shadrach Hathaway was in all prob- ability the first teacher of this school. Tradition says he was a college graduate. He died December 3, 1749, at the age of thirty three, and lies buried on land owned by the late Daniel Macomber. He was one of the original mem- bers of Silas Brett's church. In May, 1748, it was voted to build " a schoolhouse twenty-four feet long and twenty feet wide, upon land in centre of town, near or upon spot on which ould schoolhouse stands." A building com- mittee was chosen, but on January 27, 1755, this commit-
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