"Christopher's Hollow"

68BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Friends in Rh [ode] I [sland] in 175514,000 Incrfease] by 17602,413 16,413 Out of the Colony10,600 27,013 27,000 Baptists in Rh. I. 175515,000 Incr. by 17602,587 17.587 Out of the Colony5,220 [sic] 23,807 24,000 Episcopalians] in Rh. I. 17601,800 Out of the Colony10,800 12,600 13,000 " CHRISTOPHER'S HOLLOW." ASA S. WING. [The editor is indebted to Asa S. Wing, of Philadelphia, for the following notes regarding " Christopher's " or " Holder's " Hollow." Asa S. Wing is a native and now a summer resident of Sandwich, Massachusetts, and knows whereof he writes.] I have no doubt but that the " Holder's Hollow," referred to in Ezra Stiles' " Itineraries," is what we have always known as " Christopher's Hollow." The place has been pointed out to me ever since I can remember. It is near a by-road which runs across from the main road which runs to the Cape [Cod] to the Cotuit road running south from Sandwich, and is, I suppose, between one and two miles south of east from the center of Sandwich village. It is so overgrown with scrub oaks now that the lay of the land is not easily discovered from the road. John H. Dillingham, in his address, Tenth month 10, 1907, at the 250th " CHRISTOPHER'S HOLLOW,"69 anniversary of the Sandwich Meeting, thus refers to it, "The Friends held meetings where they best could—in private houses, as over here by this hill at William Allen's, and as tradition says, over there in the woods in Christopher's Hollow, which the Society ought now to possess and protect from further desecration." And before that in an editorial in The Friend [Philadelphia], he writes : " We had to postpone an intended walk to Christopher's Hollow in the woods where Christopher Holder, in 1657, preached front the hillside to an open-air Friends' meeting gathered in the hollow before him." * In " John Wing of Sandwich and His Descendants," some account is given of Friends, and the following words are used: "After this no one ventured to open his house for the accommodation of the preachers, and they were compelled to betake themselves to the fields. Tradition reports that many meetings were held at a secluded spot in the woods which from the preacher's Christian name, was afterwards known as " Christopher's Hollow ," with this foot-note : " This spot is still much venerated, especially by the descendants of those ancient contenders for religious freedom." The late C. C. Waterman, in a public lecture, Seventh month 19, 1881, gave an account of his visit to the place some time before : " Several different growths from the stately original trees have given place to a thrifty grove of young oaks, and the large rock in the center upon which the preacher once stood has been moved and devoted to other uses, but the two rows of flat stones on the rising ground in front, where his auditors sat, are still there as they were placed at first." A brief description of the Hollow will also be found in C. F. Holder's "The Holders of Holderness" [1903], pp. 68-70; also a photograph of the Hollow as it appeared in 1889 ( ?). The recollections of a visit paid to the place about twenty or twenty-five years ago by the editor correspond with A. S. Wing's notes.—Editos. 1TAe Friend (Philadelphia), Vol. 76, pp. 409, 410. ...