Charles A. Nelson , A. M., Waltham, past, present and its industries, with an historical sketch of Watertown from its settlement in 1630 to the incorporation of Waltham, January 15, 1739.

[119] narrowly escaped death. He was graduated from Harvard College with the class of 1717; was Librarian from 1718 to 1720, when he was appointed a tutor, and held the position till 1728, when he was called to the pulpit of the old North Church in Boston. He and Nicholas Sever, a fellow tutor, were conspicuous for claiming seats in the board of overseers of the College, in 1721-3, and in the troubles which grew out of an attempt to change the board, and effect the removal of certain liberal members of the Corporation. He died in 1753.

The first services of the Protestant Episcopal Church, connected with the formation of the parish of Christ Church, were held in Rumford Hall, on the first Sunday in November, 1848. The parish of Christ Church was organized February 9, 1849; the land on Central Street, upon which the church was built, was given by Dwight Boyden and J. S. C. Greene. Rev. Thomas F. Fales was elected Rector and entered upon his duties November 1, 1849. The church was consecrated December 6, 1849, and Mr. Fales has remained Rector until the present time.

The first Methodist preaching in Waltham of which we find a record, was at the house¹ of Abraham Bemis, by Bishop Asbury, Saturday, July 19, 1794. In 1798 a meeting-house, simply a boarded enclosure, with a platform for the preacher and rough board seats, was put up in the north part of Weston. In 1834 they had preaching at Mr. Ropes's school-room on Church Street, and in 1836 they began to occupy the Masonic Hall on Main Street. In the spring of 1837 a site was procured and a contract made for building a church on Church Street, when the opportunity was offered to purchase the meeting-house of the Second Religious Society (Rev. Bernard Whitman's) on the Common. Dr. Theodore Kittredge and Rev. George Pickering met the Committee of the Unitarian Society at the house of Dr. Hobbs, Agent of the Boston Manufacturing Company, and completed the purchase by giving their joint note for $3,000, its original cost having been about