[329] of these gentlemen, on the 3d of January, 1715: “Voted that the town will grant Mr. Ebenezer Brooks a pew in the part of their meeting-house joining to the minister's pew, and liberty to make a door into said pew on the outside of said meeting-house.” This was the first grant of the kind, and we should hope it would be the last; for to see the outside of a meeting-house thus sliced up into little private doors, surely could not add much to its beauty or its warmth. July 28, 1702: “Voted to give Ensign John Bradshaw fifteen shillings for sweeping the meeting-house one year, cleaning the snow away from the front-door, and shutting the casements.” Nov. 25, 1712: The town, for the first time, granted permission to one of their number to build a shed for his horse. “A merciful man is merciful to his beast.” If horses think, what must they have thought of the early settlers? We have dwelt on these minute details, because they only can give the true history of our early ancestors. These little facts tell great truths. They show us how much our fathers did with the scantiest means; and, better than all, they prove to us that the noble Anglo-Saxon Puritans who settled these shores could not be seduced by poverty to abate a tittle of their high-minded integrity, or their jealousy of power, or their Christian enthusiasm.
Second meeting-house.
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| Second meeting-house, 1727. |
