Meetinghouses of Early New England

Notes

375 Notes  Introduction: A New England Icon Reconsidered 1. The story of the sounding board and the hinged seats appears in Clark, Historical Address, 45–46. The Boston News-Letter of 23 April 1773 reports that the iron hooks holding the canopy at Grafton, Mass., gave way when the meetinghouse was not in use, crushing the pulpit desk. Note: Spellings in quotations cited in the text of this work are generally modernized except where the meaning is unclear or subject to interpretation. 2. Speare, Colonial Meeting-Houses, 67; Davis, History of Wallingford, 196; Perkins, Historical Sketches of Meriden, 52–53; Coffin, History of Newbury, 175–84; Kelly, Early Connecticut Meetinghouses, 2:33, 195; Hine, Early Lebanon, 71–84; Baldwin, “‘Devil Begins to Roar’”; History of the Connecticut Valley, 353; Hurd, History of Worcester County, 1:382. 3. Parmenter, “Old Meeting-House at Pelham.” 4. Bliss, History of Rehoboth, 214–28. 5. Torrey, History of the Town of Fitchburg, 118. 6. Winthrop, Journal, 19 March 1632 (64). 7. Confession of Faith, 38, cited in Winslow, Meetinghouse Hill, 52. 8. Chauncy, Divine Institution, 2–3. The misattribution of Chauncy’s remark “There is no just grounds . . .” began with Noah Porter, who, in “New England Meetinghouse,” 306, cites Richard Mather as the author and adds the parenthetical note “Ratio Disciplinae, 5.” This citation, however, alludes to Cotton Mather’s Ratio Disciplinae, 5, which has the same meaning but does not use the same wording. Alice Earle, in Sabbath, 1, picks up from Porter but erroneously cites Cotton Mather as the author. The phrase is correctly attributed to Chauncy in Cummings, Dictionary of Congregational Usages, 52 and 228. Born in Hertfordshire , Isaac Chauncy (1632–1712) attended Harvard College, but returned to England to serve as a pastor for the remainder of his life. 9. “Synagogue” appears in the town records of Amherst, Mass., in 1749. Gay, Gazetteer of Hampshire County, 167. 10. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 50–51, 83–84. 11. Burrage, Early English Dissenters, 2:48; Rogers, Diary, lxii, 79, 81, 128, 174. 12. The 1593 law restricting Christian fellowship is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary , 2d ed., under “meeting” 3b; it disallowed being “present at any unlawful Assemblies, Conventicles, or Meetings, under Colour or Pretence of any Exercise of Religion.” The author wishes to thank Christopher King for this research. 13. Stiles, Itineraries, 450; “Diary of Mary Vial Holyoke,” 7 August 1776 (94); Johnson, Rhode Island Baptists, 122. 14. Place, “From Meeting House to Church,” 69. The “main alley” design was far from common in New England or indeed the American colonies. 15. Congregational and Presbyterian societies enjoyed the privilege to tax in all New England states except Rhode Island. While both denominations were based on Reformed Calvinistic beliefs (the terms Congregational and Presbyterian were sometimes used interchangeably ), Congregational churches were wholly independent and followed the Cambridge platform of 1648, whereas Presbyterians organized their churches around regional councils of elders; in Connecticut Presbyterians organized under the 1708 Saybrook platform. 16. Gage, History of Rowley, 38–39, 101–4. 17. Earle’s study, like most of her work, lacks footnotes but is among the wittiest treatments of the subject written to date; Winslow’s is equally brilliant and much more erudite. 18. Sinnott, Meetinghouse and Church, 16. 19. Dean, Review of Donnelly, New England Meeting Houses, 159. 20. Sweeney, “Meetinghouses, Town Houses, and Churches,” 61. 21. Garvan, Architecture and Town Planning, 141. 22. Coolidge, “Hingham Builds a Meetinghouse,” 460–61. 23. Vernacular means native to a region or a district (rather than a literary, cultivated, or school-taught convention) or a tradition that draws on an unwritten body of agricultural, architectural, or mechanical practices. This study presents evidence that early New England meetinghouses were based on barn-making, bridge-making, and mill-making traditions while also conforming to a loosely defined but articulate concept of European Protestant ecclesiastic architecture. 24. Platform of Church Discipline, chap. 3, sec. 4. 25. North, History of Berlin, 153; Stiles, Itineraries, 244. 26. Biglow, History of Sherburne, 43. 27. Smith, History of Pittsfield, 1:447. 28. Trumbull, History of Northampton, 2:529. 29. Berkshire Genealogist 21, no. 1 (2000): 36. Chapter 1.The Meetinghouse and the Community 1. “Hovels” served to protect horses (Lockwood, Westfield and Its Historic Influences, 1:315). “To Sargt Samll Foster for the Decense of the meeting House,” Chelmsford, Mass., 1701. Cited in Waters, History of Chelmsford, 675. A “necessary” was located near the Methodist meetinghouse. Map of Lynn...