<\/p>\n
It is interesting to note how church affairs were conducted in New England in colonial days and the early years of our republic. One marked difference between New England and the south, for a long time after the 17th century settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown, was in respect to religious predominance.<\/p>\n
From the beginning the southern colonies were settled by people loyal to the Church of England. So today, when one visits the old southern churches like the one George Washington and Thomas Jefferson long attended at Williamsburg, Virginia, the Bruton Parish Church – they find an Episcopal service still conducted there.<\/p>\n
In New England, both the Pilgrims of 1620 and the Boston colony of 1630, had difference with the Church of England, although the two colonies differed from each other. The Pilgrims wanted to reform the old church, pulling it away from popish practices. ” The Boston colony, which we have become accustomed to call Puritans, desired to make a clean break with the British church and set up one of their own. Theirs was the foundation of what became the Congregationalist Church.<\/p>\n
Early in their experience in America, the Boston Puritans made their church the only permitted form of worship in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and made it dominant also over the province government, so that in effect church and state were one. Controlling legislation, the church secured passage of a law requiring each town having a certain minimum number of inhabitants to employ a minister at the expense of the taxpayers, give their first settled minister a lot of land, set aside another lot for the support of the ministry, in due time build a meetinghouse, and insure that every inhabitant regularly attend public worship.<\/p>\n
That law was still in effect in 1761, when the town of Winslow was incorporated, although it took more than thirty years for Winslow to comply with the law. In 1794, the town decided to build two meetinghouses, one on each side of the river, for the Waterville side was then a part of Winslow. One of those houses still stands on Winslow’s Lithgow Street as the Winslow Congregational Church. The other was where the Waterville City Hall now stands.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the town called its first settled minister, Rev. Joshua Cushman and gave him the prominent lot of land, the place still known as the Cushman homestead on Cushman Road in Winslow. But by 1761 the old Massachusetts Bay law had been relaxed. A town was no longer required to have an orthodox (that is, a Congregational) minister, but could employ one of any Protestant faith. Cushman, however, was of the established orthodox church. On the other hand, old Canaan that became the modern Skowhegan, chose a Presbyterian as their first minister.<\/p>\n
It was in 1728 that Massachusetts first allowed the organization of denominational churches of other than the orthodox kind. The law first exempted Episcopalians, Baptists and Quakers, then was later applied to other denominations. It exempted from taxation any families that were members of and regularly attended another organized church in a Massachusetts town.<\/p>\n
I have given you this long background account to help you better to understand what the rest of this broadcast concerns: the first Baptist church established in Maine, the one at Berwick in 1764. It was my privilege to see the records of that church in the handwriting of its early clerks from 1799 until the middle of the 19th century. Those records are actually the records of the Berwick Baptist Society, the legal unit set up under Massachusetts law to operate all property and financial interests of the church. Because finances ‘had much to do with paying the minister, the Society really controlled the ministerial affairs, although of course the organized church membership controlled the ceremonies of worship and disciplined the members.<\/p>\n
A church society could, however, include people who were not members of the church. The only requirement of a society member was that he must own a pew. In a church society the original members were usually all male. Women became pew holders usually only when they became widows. On the other hand, many of the church members were female.<\/p>\n
The group that those old Berwick records refer to was, therefore, the Society made up of the owners of pews in the Baptist meetinghouse. The Berwick church had been in existence for 35 years, holding meetings in schoolhouses and homes, when a group of Berwick citizens petitioned the Massachusetts legislature in 1799 in the following words: “Your petitoners hereby showeth that they have built a meetinghouse and have supported public teaching of piety, religion and morality by the denomination of Baptist for the past thirty years, and have lately purchased a convenient lot of land with a building thereon, for the more effective support of the gospel. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray your honors to incorporate
\nthem into a society and body politic by the name of the Baptist Society of Berwick in the County of York, with all such powers as bodies politic or religious societies are by law invested with, and pray that they may have power to admit into their society all such persons as shall be desirous of worshiping God with them.”<\/p>\n
The petition was granted, and the Society held its first meeting on June 9, 1799. It seems that they already had an old meetinghouse, for their chief item of business was recorded: “Voted that the meetinghouse on Great Hill shall be cut in two and enlarged 20 feet in length for the purpose of adding a number of pews, that the foundation shall be enlarged, the enlargement fully plastered, properly framed, the whole reshingled, and the inside<\/p>\n
That religious society did business very much like a manufacturing corporation. They were required to post public notices and conduct business according to corporate law. An instance of this is the record for March 15, 1800. “To James Emery, one of the collectors of the Incorporated Baptist Society of Berwick. You are hereby required in the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to notify and warn the pewholders and other inhabitants of said society, qualified by law to vote in parish meetings, to assemble in the Great Hill Meetinghouse on Monday, March 26, 1800, to see what money will be raised the present year and pass any other votes that shall be deemed proper.”<\/p>\n
Bear in mind that all financial matters, including pay of the minister, was left to the Society. In Baptist churches a minister could be legally called only by joint consent of church and society, but because the two groups sometimes disagreed on the choice, friction often occurred. It is commendable to note that for more than a century no such dissension plagued the Berwick church. The two groups seem to have acted in harmony.<\/p>\n
Taxation for church support did not stop when Massachusetts law exempted members of non-Congregational denominations. Although it was no longer public taxation, there remained a system of church taxes. Having become accustomed to paying church expenses by a levied tax voted by the town, it was natural that denominations should seek their own financial support by themselves levying taxes on their own people. What this Berwick Society did was levy an annual tax upon each pew. The amount would differ from year to year, but the system itself continued well into the 19th century.<\/p>\n
So, on March 15, 1800, the Berwick Society voted to raise $1,600 by a tax on pewholders. Just as the town tax was based on a person’s real estate and personal property, so the church tax was based on the assessed value of his pew. That seemed fair because it made the holders of the more expensive front pews pay a bigger tax than those who had the cheaper back pews. That may sound strange today, when most people consider pews well back in the church to be their preferred seats. But through all the early years of the 19th century preferred sittings in church were at the front.<\/p>\n
As indicated in this petition for incorporation, which I have already read to you, the Berwick Society had already bought another piece of property that they called the Parsonage farm. They did not have to give their first minister a lot under Massachusetts law, as did the people of Winslow. That had already been done for an earlier minister of the orthodox faith, supported by the town. What the Baptists did was purchase a lot, build a house on it and gave each successive minister the use of the place, including produce from the land.<\/p>\n
Since the Society felt obligated to keep the house and barn in repair, this explains votes like the one recorded on March 29, 1802. “William Harvey is authorized to examine the barn on the Parsonage Farm and make such repairs as shall be necessary, and present the bill at our next meeting.” It seems that there had been some question about the previous year’s tax, for it was voted “that the assessors make a careful examination and be sure to tax all who were omitted in last year’s taxation.”<\/p>\n
According to the records, pews were “built,” not installed. That is explained because building the old kind of pew was quite a job. It was not simply a long seat as in our modern churches. The early 19th century pews were box pews, at first with seats on three sides, with worshippers on one side sitting back to the pulpit. But early in the century there were changes to such box pews as can still be seen in the old churches at Waldoboro, Walpole and East Solon. Those have pews on only two sides – the back and the side. But like the original boxes they still have doors onto the aisle.<\/p>\n
In November 1802, the Berwick Church voted: “The privilege of building a pew at the west door shall be sold at public auction, and the purchaser shall be required to board up the doorway and furnish good glass for windows that replace the door.”<\/p>\n
Besides its box pews, the old Berwick meetinghouse had seats, sometimes fixed, sometimes moveable settees placed in the rear. This accounts for a vote in 1803. “Voted that the two back seats on the floor of the meetinghouse, on both sides of the broad aisle shall be sold at auction to the highest bidder, and the money shall be supplied to repair the meetinghouse.”<\/p>\n
Every year the Society had to make arrangements for the Parsonage Farm, even when the same minister continued to occupy it. In 1804 they voted to fence the place. In 1805 when they were without a minister, the vote was: “The benefits of the Parsonage Farm shall be applied to support of the gospel.”<\/p>\n
When, in 1806. they first engaged Rev. Joshua Chase, whom they called Elder Chase, his compensation was set at $200 a year and the use of the Parsonage Farm, to “preach to us at the Great Hill Meetinghouse.”<\/p>\n
In 1812, perhaps from hard times caused by the Embargo Act at the beginning of the war with England, the Society refused to grant Elder Chase any cash compensation. He must get along on what he could make from the farm. The actual vote read: “to choose a committee to confer with Elder Chase to see if he will preach to us for the ensuing year for the proceeds of the Parsonage Farm alone.” Chase agreed and got no cash until the war was well over.<\/p>\n
There is much more of interest in those old records that tell us how churches were run in the old days. So I shall devote next week’s broadcast to a completion of this story about the Berwick church.<\/p>\n
Year: 1980<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1237, Broadcast on April 6, 1980<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35324,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}