Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

[51] by his parish to resign. With the majority of his church he withdrew from his place and formed the “Shepard Congregational Society.” This society built, in 1832, a new meeting-house on its present site, and though compelled, by decision of the Supreme Court, to yield up its funds, records, communion silver, and some other valuables to its one time fellow-members, whom it had now left, it yet preserved in itself unbroken the succession from the first church of 1636.

Those through whose objection the division had come, stayed behind and formed the First Parish Unitarian Church. They used the old meeting house until 1833, when the present one, on the corner of Massachusetts avenue and Church street, was built.

The remaining history of Shepard Church is briefly told. Dr. Holmes died in 1837. After him came Nehemiah Adams, and in 1835, Rev. John Albro, who remained thirty years. After his death came Dr. Alexander McKenzie, who has ably led the people and kept close the ancient connection between the church and the college.

We turn now to Christ Church, the second oldest in the city, and one even more full of association, since its building has always remained substantially the same. On April 5, 1759, a letter was sent to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, asking aid to build an Episcopal Church in Cambridge. It was desired by five or six gentlemen, “each of whose incomes,” says an authority, “was judged to be adequate to the maintenance of a domestic chaplain.” The letter, signed by Henry Vassall, John Vassall, Tho. Oliver, Robt. Temple, Joseph Lee, Ralph Inman, David Phipps and James Apthorp, was drawn up