Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/30

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One of the conditions upon which the original proprietors of the town of Hopkinton received their grant was an agreement "to build and furnish a convenient meeting house and settle a learned and orthodox minister." In the first plan of the division of lots, the land was parceled out upon opposite sides of four roads, diverging from a common centre towards the four cardinal points of the compass. By this arrangement, "the minister's" lot was the first "on the north range on the west side." The fifth lot in regular order on the same range and side was also a "ministerial lott."

The first settlers in Hopkinton came here probably as soon as 1739. At a public meeting held in the house of Timothy Knowlton, on the 24th of May, the same year, it was voted to 'build and furnish a meeting house by the last of the following October, said meeting house to be "thirty-five ft. in length, twenty-five ft. in breadth, and eight ft. between joints, with a basil roof." This house was not built. Troubles incident to frontier life came on, and twenty-seven years passed away before a church was erected. In the mean while the people worshipped in Putney's Fort, which stood near the angle of the roads diverging northwardly and easterly on the top of Putney's Hill, on land now occupied by Mrs. L. A. Stanwood, and where the first settled minister in town was ordained.

The first church was built in the year 1766. It was fifty feet long, thirty-eight broad, and the posts were twenty-two feet. Eight years more passed away before a pulpit and pews were added. Five hundred pounds, "old tenor," were originally appropriated for the erection of this house. A depreciated state of the currency made this appropriation equivalent to something over $1000. On the 5th of February. 1789, the church was burned. A local difference of feeling engendered a dispute which terminated in a crime. The first centre of the town was on Putney's Hill. Increase of population and incident circumstances gave a prominence and preference to the spot where the village now is. The first church was built on the site of the present Congregational house of worship. Some, of course, were dissatisfied. A certain young man testified to his dissent by burning the building. He was punished for a time by confinement in jail, and at labor. At a town meeting, May 8, 1789, it was voted to forgive him, his father binding him to labor for the town till satisfaction was rendered. The society of worshippers, thrown out of doors by the destruction of their meeting-house, accepted for a time the offer of Benjamin Wiggin, taverner, to open his barn for their accommodation. The house of Benjamin Wiggin is still standing, next building westerly to the Episcopal church. It was in front of Benjamin Wiggin's, under the trees now standing, that the Rev. Jacob Cram, third minister in the town, was ordained, February 25, 1789.

In less than four months from the burning of the first house, a second one was erected. The old controversy was revived. It had only partially culminated on the day of the fire. A commitiee [sic], consisting of Nathan Sargent, Samuel Farrington, John Jewett, John Moore. Isaac Chandler, James Buswell, Benjamin B. Darling, Enoch Eastman, and Joshua Morse, had reported on February 2, 1789, as follows;

"After we have considered the matter respecting the meeting-house. We have examined the rates and we find the east end of the town pays about 8 pounds in fifty in the minister tax more than the