Worcester County, Massachusetts - Chapter 102, 1889

The Meeting-House Lot And The Houses That Origin And Growth

near the Pines, and if the said spot cannot be obtained on reasonable terms, that then the meeting-house be set on Meeting-House Hill," whereby it appears that the hill laid down on maps and known to this day as Meeting-house Hill was so called as early as two years and a half after the first comers were here - doubtless because public opinion had designated this hill as the site of the house of worship that was to be. It belonged to the proprietors - which Rocky Plain did not - and it was nearer to the centre of the township. Rocky Plain was part of Haynes' Farm and the portion of it which the proprietors wanted belonged to one of their number, William Taylor. Its name. Rocky Pine Plain, indicates the boulders and forest trees that the pioneers had to deal with. On the 4th of May, 1721, the very month when the first meeting-house in Shrewsbury was built, William Taylor conveyed to the proprietors, of whom he was one and retaining an equal right therein with any one single proprietor, fifteen acres of land situate on Rocky Plain and lying within the bounds of a fiirm purchased by him of one of the heirs of John Haynes, bounded westerly by land of John I'.alcom, northerly by land of Edward Goddard, southerly by the [squadron line and every other way by the remaining paits of said Taylor's own land. The squadron line here was the Connecticut Road, then so called. In making this conveyance Sergeant Taylor was actuated mainly by public spirit, though no doubt he expected advantages from having the meeting-house, which was sure to be the village centre, near where he had settled. On the 20th of May, sixteen days after his conveyance to them, the proprietors granted to him in satisfaction of his fifteen acres "5 acres and 24 rods of land on Pine Plain, westerly of Haynes' Farm on the south side of the country road," remote from the centre and of trifling value - a mere make-weight or nominal quid pro quo granted from some supposed legal necessity for a consideration. This fifteen acres, called "the common," beside the church site, the land around it and the graveyard, contained several other parcels, some of which were sold by the proprietors and some of which were appropriated without sale. The lot on which the Sumner house stands, and which was the southwest corner of the original Common, was sold in 1754 to Artemas Ward, who afterward sold it to Dr. Joseph Sumner. The house where Mr. A. J. Gibson lives, where formerly stood the old Crosby house, occupies the southeast corner. Both the Town House and the High School house are on the Taylor grant. Nor can any record of any conveyance or grant of the proprietors be found of the sites of these public buildings. The site of the Andrews house and the field in rear of it are entirely within the old Common limits; so also is a part of the site of the Jonas Stone house, but the sites of these two houses and the fielil were sold by the proprietors, as by their records appears.'

Under date May 13, 1766, the day of raising the second ineeting-house of the First Parish, Dr. Sumner has a memorandum of the fact, accompanied with a note, that "The first meeting-house iu Shrewsbury was Erected in ye niounth of May, 1721." The site of tlie first meeling-house, according to tradition, was ji little northerly and easterly of where the present liouse now stands. lis dimensions, given in the proprietors' records, were " 40 feet in length by 32 in brcadtli, 14 feet stud." And the proprietors voted, June 22, 1720, to lay an assessment of five pounds on each, - aggregate of forty-two proprietors, two hundred and ten pounds. Tliis house had neitiier steeple nor bell. The first sermon ever preached in Shrewsbury was by Rev. Robert Breck, of Marlborough, June 15, 1720, and the record of the meeting of the proprietors, when the assessment before referred to was voted, contains also the proprietors' vote ti» apply to Mr. Brecl^ for the notes of his sermon, in order to have them printed.'

For forty-five years (1721-60) the first meetinghouse served its original purpose, but during the last five years or more there had been a growing feeling grandeoiis tile comers and boundaries of tbe Taylor grsmt, and told tbeiii tbut they were pointed out to bim wlien a boy by bis grandtatber Taylor. These grandsons were then scliool-hoys, of the age of seven teeu years, studying surveyiug in tbe Shrewsbury High School, and one of them, a youth of rare promise and mathematical capacity, surveyed and plotted tbe old Common .as bis great-great-grandfatlier originally granted it, and bis plot lies before me on my desk while I write. His field notes are " Began at S.W. corner on the road and ran east 31 rods, N. 4° W. 721^ rods, .S. 7U° W. 4:iU rods, S. 17° E. (ISH rods, to where we began, - area, 16 acres, 42 rods." Tbe other boy was the writer, who alone, of all William Taylor's descendants, has the honor to bear bis name. His cousin, who made tbe survey, and whose name was Nathan Howe, so called after his grandfather, untimely died at the age of twenty-one years of a malignant typhus, I have recently di-covered in the files of tbe Supreme Judicial Court, October Term, IS 12, at Worcester, Fitut Parish iu Siirewsbury rs. Daniel STuitb, a carefully made plan of the " MeetingHouse lands," by Henry Snow, for the use of the court on trial of that case, showing all the roads, buildings, hoi'se-sheds, tombs and fences, and tbe site of tbe meeting-house as it was in 1832, and I am both gratified and surprised at tbe almost exact coincidence of tbe survey of this accurate and painstaking surveyor with that of my youthful cousin,

A history of Shrewsbury ought not to omit some notice of tbe famous lawsuit of the parish with Daniel Smith, and I must crowd in somewhere a brief account of it, - bore perhaps as well as anywhere. In 1S31) Daniel Suiitb, who was a grandson of William Taylor, claimed title to the Common as his heir, plowed it up and sowed it with rye, whereupon the parish brought an action of trespass against bim. Of course Taylor himself bad no title after his conveyance to the proprietors, except as one of them, and even this title, since the proprietors were a corporation, did not descend to Taylor's heirs; and, even if Taylor h.ad never conveyed tbe Common at all, Smith would have had no other title than as one of Taylor's many descendants. But tbe proprietors were all dead, and their quasi-corporate organization w.os extiuct. And tbey had never, either personally or corporately, conveyed the t'ommon to either the town or the parish, nor to anybody. In the action brought against bim by tbe parish. Smith's lawyers, Rejoyce Newton and Levi Lincoln, finding be had no title to stand on, boldly challenged tbe title of tbe parish. But the Court held that the pai-isb was tbe legal successor of the proprietors to at least so much of tbe Common as bad been actually used for parochial imrposes, and, being in actual possession, could maintaiu its action against a stranger. Tbe case is a leading authority upon parish law, 14 Pick., 2H7.

that a new house of worship was needed. The town had grown, and, notwithstanding it had been divided into two parishes, the old house was too small. The building of the second meeting-house was long debated at town-meetings. Finally resolved upon, in the spring of 1766, it w.ts commenced in earnest and speedily completed. It was not jobbed off to the lowest bidder, but built by a building committee, who employed Daniel Heminway, of Shrewsbury, the famous meeting-house builder, who built the Old South, in Worcester, and many other meeting-houses and public buildings, to frame it. The committee was instructed, by vote of the town, in employing labor and in purchase of materials, to give the preference to inhabitants of the town. All the carpenters of Shrewsbury worked upon the meetinghouse. All the lumber grew in Shrewsbury woods, and was sawn in Shrewsbury mills. All the nails were made by Shrewsbury blacksmiths. The record of a townmeeting immediately preceding the meeting-house raising reveals the muuicipal estimate of the magnitude of the undertaking. The question whether the town would procure a ginn to raise the meetinghouse with was debated, and "determined in ye negative." But the committee were directed to procure a lot of new spike poles; also " voted that ye committy provide Drinks & Provisions," and " voted to commence the raising at six o'clock in the morning." And lest ye committee should mistake their instruction-', and also probably to encourage a good attendance and make everybody stay till the last rafter was in place and the last pin driven home, it was further " voted to provide a Good Supper, and to send to Boston for a Barrel of Rhum."

The new house was fifcy-flve feet in length by forty-three in breadth, and had entrances on the east and west ends and on the south side. Like its predecessor, it had neither steeple nor bell. If one take a lantern and go up into the attic and look at the enormous plates and roof-timbers, resting where they were raised by the new spike-poles one hundred and twenty-two years ago, he cannot but wonder how they were ever got there with the use of no other machinery.- The original site where the house was raised, and stood till 1834, was about fifty feet south of its present location, and its longest dimension was east and west. Many hands make quick work, and jnst two months after the raising Dr. Sumner says, "July 16, 1766, Being Lord's day, we met ye first time in the New House, upon wh. occasion I Preached from Genesis 28 chapter & ye 17 verse."

2 Unless "rum done it ?" Itwasattbis raising that Artemas Ward, whose active drilling of his regiment directly after passage of the Stamp Act bad come to the ear of Royal Goveruor Bernard, received the revocation of bis commission as colonel. The reply which the reduced officer sent the Governor that he bad been twice honored is worthy of inscription on his monument - where it is.

for a clock. The bell, for which the money was raised by subscription, was not hung until next year. The clock was added still later. Why the steeple was built OQ the west end, thereby giving the building the appearance of facing Dr. Sumner's back-yard, it is difficult to say ; but so it was and so it stood until 1834, when the house was swung quarter round so as to face the south and moved to its present site, raised up so as to construct a vestry underneath and remodeled. Its porches were taken off so as to conform, outside and inside, to the then prevailing style of church architecture.

In ISul Jonah Howe and eight others were incorporated as trustees of a fund for the support of a Congregaiional minister in the town of Shrewsbury, by an act of the General Court passed February 18th of that year. The act recites the former appropriation of certain securities and moneys, amounting to niue hundred and twenty dollars, by the town, and the recent subscription of 1^2,243 for support of the minister, limits the fund to a maximum of eight thousand dollars, the interest of which only is to be applied to the minister's salary, provides for an annual meeting of trustees in April, each year, to elect a treasurer and clerk and fill vacancies in trustees, and makes the trustees responsible to the town. If the interest should ever amount to more than enough to pay the salary of the minister, it was to be applied to the schools of the town. Dr. Sumner has left a memorandum that shows the origin of the fund :

April, 1792. - According to a vote of ttie town of Shrewsliiiry, tlie hinder seats in the meeting-house was taken up, and six pews built, which sold fur about £1-10, which is to remain as a fund, the interest of which to be appropriated for support of the Gospel.

Sundry contributious have, from time to time, been made by difterent persons to this fund, and the amount of it is now more than double the maximum prescribed in the original act. By chapter TiO, Acts of 186(5, its name was changed to a " Fund for the Support of a Congregational Minister in the First Congregational Parish and Religious Society in the Town of Shrewsbury," and the limitation of the original act to eight thousand dollars was raised to twenty thousand dollars, and the trustees are made accountable to the parish, instead of the town. Jonathan H. Nelson, who died in 1872, gave this fund a legacy of five thousand dollars, the largest contribution given by any donor at any one time, but less than the aggregate sums given by Amasa Howe, who in his lifetime (1869) gave eighteen hundred dollars, and who, dying in 1883, was found by his will, made in 1872, to have given a legacy of twenty-two hundred dollars to this fund, and also by a codicil made in 1882 another legacy of two thousand dollars,' making a total of six thousand dollars.

1 The writer, who was the testator's nephew and one of his executors, being consulted by his uncle about tliis legacy, advised him against it. Ilia reply, characteristic wf the whole life uf the man - then eighty-eight years old - will interest all who knew him : "I want the same kind of preaching kept up in Shrewsbury after I am dead and gone that there

And Thomas Rice, who died May 29, 1888, has left a legacy of one thousand dollars in trust with the trustees of this fund, one-half of the interest of which is to be applied by the trustees to the care of the testator's lot and monument in the cemetery, and the other half to be applied to the payment of the salary of the minister of the Congregational parish. I am unable to give the amounts of any other donations or the names of the donors. The present total of the fund is about eighteen thousand dollars and its income about nine hundred dollars.