Before the groundbreaking ceremony in February 1999, I found my copy of Ina Mansur’s “A New England Church 1730-1834”, a history of First Parish Church published in 1974. After reading parts regarding the construction of our current building, I wanted to share some of the story with you.

“On April 1, 1815, Elijah Stearns, cousin and neighbor of Samuel (Stearns, minister of First Parish Church) and thirteen others sponsored Article 6 in the warrant for a town meeting. ‘To know if it be the mind of the town to build a new meetinghouse and make arrangements for the purpose or do anything respecting a meetinghouse’. The town appointed a committee ‘to take into consideration the expediency of the building and what the old house will fetch and report to the town at next May meeting.’ The committee’s report, submitted on May 1st, was unacceptable, probably because it contained no details. However, during the following season, detailed plans were worked out, including a sketch of the proposed building.

“In September an event occurred which may have influenced the size of the building being considered, the kind of wood to be used, and the speed with which the work could be done. It was the great gale of 1815.” The town committee’s ‘specs’ stated “that the house be built 58 feet long and 53 feet wide, 30 foot posts, close stairs to the pulpit; 58 pews on the lower floor…the undertakers to have the old meetinghouse and being allowed to use whatever is suitable for said work”. The price they were considering was $2,500, and was to “front the road leading from Carlisle to Lexington, and …to be set 40 feet south from the front of the old meetinghouse.”

(Years later, students of architecture recognized many features of the building were similar to illustrations in a book of plans for churches, written by Asher Benjamin to assist carpenters, especially country artisans, in their work.)

“Contract for construction was given to Joshua Page, great-grandson of the first covenantor, Nathaniel and Levi Wilson, grandson of Jonathan Wilson, who had been killed on April 19, 1775. The cost had risen to $5,445 plus the old building, which would supply timbers useful in the construction of the new...In the spring, townsmen appointed building inspectors, and changing the site, decided to set the church south of elm trees which stood south of the old meetinghouse. The frame of the 87 year old church was stripped to its timbers early in July 1816, after the last public worship service was held in it.”