USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Westborough > The history of Westborough, Massachusetts. Part I. The early history. By Heman Packard De Forest. Part II. The later history. By Edward Craig Bates > Part 10
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AN ANNIVERSARY SERMON.
present times, which are full of Religious commotions, were considered, and, that we might obtain ye blessing & avoid the snares, the church were very ready to vote, and did so, that we observe a Day of Solemn Fasting and Prayer, and that it be, God willing, this day sennight."
This calm and steady endeavor to maintain caution and rationality in a time of great and general excitement was approved by the sequel. It was not long before the heated emotion died out; and then from every place where there had been zeal without discretion there came reports of dissensions and divisions. Councils were constantly being called. Ordinarily the separatists, or "New Lights," were repudiated by the churches, and churches that had been harmonious were divided. Grafton was rent in pieces ; Sudbury and Ipswich suffered severely; from Holliston, Rutland, and other towns came calls to Westborough to join in councils to settle difficulties; and the peace and comparative quietness which prevailed in this church was exceptional. Not that there had not been a deep and intense feeling here; not that there had not been dross mingled with the gold: but no one had been encouraged to mistake the dross for gold, and the truths of Scripture and reason had ever been held up as the guide, rather than the impulses of feeling. The results of the patient instruction of the twenty years of Mr. Parkman's ministry now appeared in full power.
On the 28th of October, 1744, Mr. Parkman preached a sermon appropriate to the twentieth anniversary of his settlement and of the organization of the church. The identical manuscript from which he preached it lies be- fore me. It was not written out in full, and the notes of the last half are only headings. Like all his sermons and his Diary, it is written on small sheets of paper, now
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
yellow with time, measuring about six inches by four. The writing is not merely small, but minute; and a margin of nearly an inch is left for the insertion of notes, the number- ing of heads, etc. It is not easy reading ; how he ever read it in the pulpit is a puzzle. He used, as was the custom then, a great many abbreviations; and as the lines are not more than an eighth of an inch apart, he succeeded in crowd- ing almost as much into a page as might have been printed in the same space. This sermon is numbered CCLXVIII .; and the notes of it are contained in seven of the small pages.
He took his text from Genesis xxxi. 38: " This twenty years have I been with thee." The first two of the seven pages are occupied with introductory matter illustrating the " custom of the servants of God to take special notice of the remarkable periods of their lives" by the example of Jacob in the text, of Samuel, of Moses, of Joshua, and of "the holy apostle St. Paul." He then comes to the matter in hand, and divides the body of the discourse into two main heads: "What God has done for us, " and " What we have been, and done, in return." The first head is written quite fully ; the second, which is subdivided into five sections, mainly of a hortatory character, is only indicated by a few phrases. As the memorial portion con- tains some few points not found elsewhere, and also fur- nishes a good example of Father Parkman's style, it seems worth while to give it entire, as follows : --
"We are again brought, my dear brethren, to the 28th of October, - a day, as you may have remarked, I have been wont to take some singular notice of, being the day of our founding and ordination. But now, through the abundant mercy of God, we have arrived unto the twentieth year since ; and it is now our incumbent duty to consider seriously what God has done for us, and what we have been, and done, in return.
" I. As to what the Lord has on his part graciously done for
-
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us (for indeed all that he has done for us has been very graci- ously and mercifully). Not only may we celebrate his wondrous love and pity to mankind in sending his dear and only begotten Son for the redemption thereof ; not only his inspiring the holy writers of the Old and New Testaments ; setting up the church in the world ; instituting his ordinances ; sending the gospel into Britain ; raising up his cause out of the darkness and super- stitions of popery (for the Reformation was like a resurrection). . Not only the bringing the first fathers of this country, and plant- ing evangelical churches in this then howling wilderness ; but the Lord's great goodness and compassion towards the first set- tlers of this town, in supporting them under their great difficul- ties and hardships in their beginning this place, when they first came out of Marlborough to inhabit these woods ; and protect- ing them in times of great danger and troubles by the Indian wars, when some of their children were made a prey, and the rest of their lives were daily jeopardized, their toil and fatigue unspeakably sore, and their distresses many. Our ears have heard, and our fathers among us have told us, what great things the Lord has done in guarding and delivering them when but few in number, weak, and much exposed ; and as the most of them are (through the favor of God) yet alive, though some are fallen asleep, they can and ought to recollect and bear in mind, with highest gratitude, what a merciful and all-sufficient God did for you in those early days of this place, - succeeding and increasing you and yours from year to year.
" But then again, it is not to be forgotten how the Lord was pleased to appear for the people, and extricated you out of great perplexity and temptation when you had fallen into hot strife and contention, and your attempts to settle the ordinances of Christ among you were rendered abortive.1 And doubtless it becomes us all to take a suitable, and that a very grateful, notice of the hand of God in erecting a church of our Lord Jesus Christ, - one of his golden candlesticks, - and setting up his ordinances here in this place, though it were after some time ; and that these things were done with so observable an unanimity and agreement on the part of the inhabitants. Nor would I fail
1 Referring to the trouble with Daniel Elmer.
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
to add, as St. Paul in I. Tim. i. 12, -- a little varied, - that I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, the most unworthy, for that through his grace he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. Nay, it would be injustice if I should not mention also, to the glory of God, the kind reception, the affectionate esteem, which was generally manifested when I came to you, as well as the tolerable peace and harmony which was then visible amongst yourselves.1
" As to what has been chiefly remarkable, - since we cannot but observe the sparing mercy and goodness of God to us from one year to another, and at some particular periods very memor- ably ; but especially, we ought never to forget the year 1727. For then, we having stood three years, through the Divine indul- gence and patience, I conceived the Divine mind concerning us was to be gathered out of that passage in Luke xiii. 7.2 But then that very night, after those solemn warnings of God's word, came the Great EARTHQUAKE. But then on the next Lord's day (I think) I preached upon the words next follow- ing : 'Lord, let it alone this year also' (as, when the year came about, I did on those words, 'If not, then after that thou shalt,' etc.); and how wondrously God has accordingly borne with us! And what an assurance of God's goodness was the sparing my life,8 and recovering me to my work when I was visited once and again with both fever and rheumatism! Let me never forget those benefits towards me !
" We must acknowledge with great thankfulness that we have had sundry very valuable outward mercies, which we ought not to overlook. In special, we have not only enjoyed much health all along, in this place, compared with some other towns, but we have also had, as far as has come to my knowledge for most of the years past, the favor of considerable peace ; and God has blessed you with no contemptible temporal enlargements and substance.
1 The word "then" is inserted as an after-thought in the margin, as though the present trouble, resulting in the division of the town, were on his mind.
2 " Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none : cut it down," etc.
3 In 1729.
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" And as to what is much the most worthy of our notice and observance, the internal influences of the Divine Spirit and grace, we have not, as I humbly judge, been altogether without some good tokens hereof (though it is matter of great grief and mourning, as we shall hereafter more positively say, that there have been no more signs of grace and conversion among us). As we have been favored with the external means of grace, though most undeserving, so there have been, at several times, some movings of the Spirit of God among us. But as to the outward tokens thereof, by persons joining to the church, I have not been very fond of promoting and countenancing great mul- titudes of these, when it has been plain to me either that it has been very much out of form, or when they have been too raw and unqualified, as being too unexperienced in the practical and spiritual part of religion, or not been so much as indoctrinated and instructed in the necessary principles of Christianity ; but yet, sometimes we have had five or six together. . .. At or about two of those seasons in which we principally had awaken- ings among us, we had religious societies set up among us. Presently after the earthquake (besides the young men's society) the Family meeting was constituted ; and in the year '41 there were (I suppose) no less than seven different societies in town, of old and young, of one sex and the other, who from time to time used to meet for religious worship. But in very truth, the external form and bodily exercise profiteth little ; it is the Spirit that giveth life. This is what God would freely give, did we but duly ask. . . . "
It would have been gratifying if this discourse had dealt more largely in the facts of the history of the twenty years; but that would not have been in accord with the prevailing ideas of the demands of sermons and of the house of God. It seems to us most singular of all that, inasmuch as it was written only a week after the division of the town into north and south precincts, it should make no definite allusion to that event. The explanation doubtless is that the subject was too deli-
9
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
cate, and the feeling too sore to allow safe allusions. But however meagre in historical data, the sermon is of no slight value as furnishing a glimpse into the life and thought of the time, and the considerations which took strongest hold of men's feeling. There has been much change since then, - knowledge has vastly increased; but the fidelity and reverence of those days was the good soil out of which our best fruit has grown.
CHAPTER X.
1744-1766.
THE FIRST PRECINCT.
W TE have seen that from the 20th of October, 1744, the town was divided into two precincts, of which the first and southernmost corresponded essentially to the present town of Westborough. Each precinct managed its own affairs and constituted a parish by itself ; but both assembled for town-meetings alternately in the meeting- houses of the two sections. The whole town, at the time of the division, contained one hundred and twenty-five families, of whom only thirty-eight were set off in the second precinct, leaving eighty-seven in the first.
The first precinct held its first meeting Jan. 3, 1745, to appoint precinct officers and to take measures to retain Mr. Parkman as minister, - that is, as the minister of the first precinct, and no longer of the town. He at first would hear nothing of it, charging that his contract, which was made with the whole town, was "shocked and violated " by the doings of the precinct meeting. He had come, in the first year of his manhood, to be the minister of Westborough; he had lived with them all, and shared their prosperity and adversity, until he was now in the prime of life and the full activity of his powers; and the thought of losing an important part of his parish, and becoming the minister of a mere. section, was intolerable. But when at a second meeting, held the 22d of January, the people of the first precinct unanimously requested him
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to remain their pastor, voted to pay his salary from Oct. 20, 1744, - the date of the division of the town, -and sent a committee to consult him as to the amount they should allow him for damages in case the meeting-house should be removed, he was greatly mollified. On February 8th they voted to give him £500, " old tenor," if the meeting- house should be removed more than three quarters of a mile from his house, so that he should be obliged to move, and to pay him £55 in bills " of the new tenor, not soldier money," as stated salary. To this he subsequently agreed, and so the compact was renewed, which was to last for thirty-seven years longer.
In May, 1746, the process of division was farther carried forward by an ecclesiastical separation. Capt. James Eager had given a lot of land for a meeting-house in the north parish, situated a little westward of the site of the pres- ent old meeting-house in Northborough. Thereupon five brethren asked to be dismissed from the church, and five others from the same section, in conjunction with the deacons, called for a church meeting, in view of the serious matters pressing upon them, which was solemnly held on the 7th of May, "to consider God's great mercy to us in bringing us into a church state, and his glorious patience and goodness in continuing us to this day; " and "to bewail our unfaithfulness to God and to each other under our high and holy character, and under our sacred obligations, - manifest in our unfruitfulness, deadness, carnality, and worldly-minded- ness; " and more to the same effect.
And now, as in the first organization of a church, the brethren go alone into the new body; not until August are any of the women dismissed, and then with a rather ungallant proviso "that something be inserted in their
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
dismission touching their delinquency, which we have observed of late, with an Exhibition and Caution to them respecting ye time to come."
Those who remained in the old church had now to con- sider the question of adapting themselves to the new state of affairs. The meeting-house was in the extreme north of their area, and inconvenient for many of them. Yet the attachment to old landmarks, and the private rights of ownership in the building, served to avert any change for a year or two longer. The precinct had definitely re- fused, in May, 1745, to find its geographical centre or to build a new meeting-house. Thus matters remained until the beginning of 1748, when there was a proposal made to build a new meeting-house " on the Great Road within 30 rods of the Burying Place, easterly of said Burying Place." This was temporarily refused; but measures were taken to find the centre of the precinct, and in April it was voted to build " on the north side of the Cuntry road where there is now a Pine Bush grows, about twenty-five or thirty rods easterly from the Burying Place in said Precinct." This burying-place was the old cemetery, opposite the present town-hall; and the meeting-house still stands near its original site, and is familiarly known as " The Old Arcade." Edward Baker, Thomas Forbush, Dea. Josiah Newton, Francis Whipple, and Abner New- ton constituted the building committee. In December, £600, old tenor, was appropriated toward the building. A piece of land five rods long and eight wide was pur- chased in January, 1749, of Nathan Brigham, of South- borough. The house was to be fifty feet long by forty wide, with posts twenty-three feet high. In April it was ready for the raising; and accordingly the precinct voted, on the 17th, "to provide Half a barrel of Roum, by the
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
cost and charge of the precinct, for the Raising the frame of the meeting-house which the precinct voted to build. . .. Voted, Capt. John Maynard, Lieut. Simeon Taintor, Lieut. Abijah Bruce to be a committee to take care to provide the Roum for raising the frame of the meeting-house. . . Voted, to underpin the sils of the meeting-house." They also refused to take down the old house and use the material in the new one.
Four months later the opposition to taking down the old house was so far overcome that a vote was passed, August 10, with four " decents," to take it down, "and use and improve so much of the boards, nails, glass, and tim- ber of the sª old meeting-house in closing and finishing the sª new meeting-house as will be profitable to sª pre- cinct; the interest and property of particular men in their several and respective pews in sd old meeting-house excepted. Voted to take the pulpit and ministerial pew, and set them up in the new house. Voted to take the old meeting-house down at or before the second Monday of Sept. next ensuing."
The first meeting was held in the new house the 3d of September, according to Mr. Parkman's Diary, -a sheer necessity, probably, from the demolition of the old one, for it could not have been more than barely covered in. On the 15th it was voted to sell the glass of the old house and so much of the timber as was not used.
Mr. Parkman still lived in the parsonage beside the site of the old meeting-house, a little more than a mile away from the new one. On Sundays he had not time to go home for his lunch between services, - which was a great inconvenience; and as it was hardly consistent with the dignity that pertained to the office to carry it with him and eat it in the meeting-house, and as no one offered to
RAILROAD ( CROSSING
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EAST MAIN STREET.
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
invite him in, he was obliged, evidently, to pay for his meal, for he petitioned the precinct to assume the expense, and at a meeting on the 28th of November it refused the request. He next requested, very properly, that the pre- cinct would carry into effect its vote of Feb. 8, 1745, prom- ising him, in case the meeting-house were removed more than three quarters of a mile from his house, the sum of £500, old tenor, to enable him to move. But, as usual, the event showed that it was much easier to vote a sum of money long in advance, when they were anxious to induce the minister to stay, than to pay it when called for; for at a meeting held Jan. 15, 1750, the precinct curtly refused to "put the £500 into a rate to enable him to move his habitation to the new house, or to make provision for his moving in any other way." But he insisted that the pre- vious vote was binding, and a meeting was called a fort- night later, which, with the exasperating slowness of the time, adjourned another fortnight, and then, with a bad . grace, faced the necessity and put the money into a rate.
Meantime, in January, the neighbors had met to break ground for his new house "on the south road," near the new meeting-house, - the spot now occupied by the resi- dence of the late Dr. William Curtis. The frame was not raised, however, till the 7th of September following, and the building progressed very slowly. But the work was done thoroughly, if not rapidly; for the house, afterward owned and occupied by Judge Brigham, is still standing, just beyond the High Street school-house. It was evidently considered a fine house, even somewhat extravagant, at the time, and there were not wanting those who found fault with the parson for his ambition to have as good a house as anybody. One day in June, 1751, as he rode down to inspect the windows and doors, which had just
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arrived, he was sharply rallied by Lieutenant Taintor about the pride of ministers, because his window-frames were so large. "And although I rebuked him," says the worthy divine naïvely, "for thus speaking, especially as there were many persons present, yet I was disturbed thereat; and the frames were larger than I had intended, and I would rather they had been smaller."
In the following August he remarks in his Diary that he is obliged to move at once, although the house is unfit to be occupied, - the hearth is unlaid, the banks of gravel on each side of the door are unlevelled, and moreover there is no pasture for a cow, and no grass or hay for the horse. But move he must; and the register, less reticent than he, tells us why. We find that he moved in on the 20th, and that on the 22d a child Samuel appeared upon the scene, keeping up the regular succession, which for more than twenty years hardly failed to bring a new life into the par- sonage once in two years. The family was becoming nu- merous by this time, - Samuel was the twelfth child; 1 and though two or three had died, there was need of consider- able house-room. Eben, as his father called him, was now a young man of twenty-four, and, to the regret of his par- ents, did not take kindly to a life of study, but obtained their reluctant consent to become a farmer. There is little or no light on the family life during all these years. Mr. Parkman was busy with his parish and his farm, and Mrs. Parkman did not find time to keep a journal. There were four girls; two others had died. Mary, the eldest, was now twenty-six ; Susannah, the youngest, was six. Thomas was only two years younger than Eben; William was a restive boy of ten, of whom his father has to record that "Mr. Solomon Wood, Tything man, complains of [his]
1 He was the donor of the town bell in 1801.
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THE FIRST PRECINCT.
rudeness at church." There are besides two baby boys of two and four years, and now the new-comer. For some time there must have been great inconvenience in the unfinished house, and much to do to keep house and farm and parish in order. Mr. Parkman kept his stock for some time on his old place, riding back and forth daily.
But if the minister's house grew slowly, the meeting- house crept toward completion at snail's pace. Although the first meeting had been held there in September, 1749, just after the old house was torn down, we find the precinct voting, three years later, in December, 1752, " to build the pulpit and ministerial pew, the gallery stairs, floors, and breastwork of the galleries, and to sell the pews; the highest payer in the two [?] years they were building to have the first choice. Chose a committee to mark out the pews and to dignify and set a price upon each pew. Voted that the pew room on the floor next the walls, and the room where the four hind seats should be, shall be called Pew- Room." Feb. 6, 1753, they voted to sell no pew-spot to non-residents; on the 12th they held the sale. Twenty-two pew-spots were sold, and the record of the sale is extant; so that it is not difficult to re-seat the old meeting-house as it was in the year of grace 1753. The house itself was fifty feet by forty; the front door was on the south side, toward the street, which was one of the longer sides; the pulpit was opposite; there were also doors on the east and west ends. The pews were arranged round the walls, except in the two corners on the street, where were stair- cases leading to the galleries, - one for the women on the north side, and one for the men on the south. The centre was occupied by two rows of benches, - one for the men, and one for the women. The centre aisle was five feet wide; the two side alleys and the rear alley were
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
three and a half feet; the alley before the pulpit was three feet nine inches "from ye deacons' seat."
Pew-spots were purchased as follows: -
"Capt. John Maynard ; pew in hind seats on right hand of the alley.
Jeduthun Fay ; Pew-spot on right hand of ministerial pew.
Jonas Brigham ; on left hand of alley in men's seats, next the alley.
Jas. Grout ; second pew spot on right of east door.
Benj. Fay ; second pew spot on left of west door.
Edward Baker ; third pew spot on left of pulpit.
Dea. Josiah Newton ; first on left of pulpit. .
Jonathan Bond ; second on left of pulpit.
Samuel Harrington ; second on right hand of front door.
James Maynard ; between east door and the women's stairs.
Ensign Jas. Miller ; in hind seats on left hand on men's side.
Charles Rice ; on left hand west door.
Timothy Warren ; in north-east corner of meeting-house.
Widdo Vashty Newton ; in hind seats on right hand, next women's door.
Jonah Warren ; on right hand of east door.
Hezekiah Howe ; right hand west door, next men's stairs.
Nathaniel Whitney ; third spot on right hand front door, next women's stairs.
David Maynard ; northwest corner of meeting house.
Eliezer Rice ; third spot on left hand front door, next women's stairs.
Lieut. Abijah Bruce ; second spot on left hand front door.
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