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Meetinghouses of Early New England PDF

458 Pages·2012·15.912 MB·English
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MEETINGH OUSES OF EARLY NEW EN GLAND (cid:2) “This page intentionally left blank” MEETI NGHOUSES OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND Peter Benes University of Massachusetts Press amherst and boston To Jane, Tuska, and Mina Copyright © 2012 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America lc 2011050380 isbn 978-1 - 55849- 910-2 Designed by Dennis Anderson Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by Westchester Book Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data Benes, Peter. Meetinghouses of early New England / Peter Benes. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-55849-910-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Public buildings—New England— History. 2. Wooden churches—New England—History. 3. Vernacular architecture— New England—History. 4. New England—Church history. I. Title. na4210.b46 2012 726.50974—dc23 2011050380 British Library Cata loguing in Publication data are available. Frontispiece. The Old Church Truro. Meetinghouse built in 1720 on the Hill of Storms, Truro, Massachusetts. Demolished in 1840. Watercolor by Edwin Whitefi eld, circa 1860–1870. Courtesy of Historic New England. Contents (cid:2) Introduction: A New Eng land Icon Reconsidered 1 PART I: THE BACKGROUND 1 The Meetingh ouse and the Community 13 2 The Meetingh ouse and the Church 29 3 The Builders 49 4 Seating the Congregation 62 PART II: THE ARCHITECTURE 5 Meetingh ouses of the Seventeenth Century 77 6 Meetingh ouses of the Eight eenth Century 118 7 Meetingh ouses of the Early Nineteenth Century 204 PART III: CONCLUSIONS 8 Some Theoretical Models 221 9 Meetingh ouse Architecture as Puritan Ecclesiology 239 10 A Fleeting Image 264 Epilogue 273 Appendix A: Tables 281 Appendix B: Chronological checklist of meetingh ouses in New En gland and Long Island, 1622–1 830 289 vvii Cont ents Appendix C: Pinnacles, pyramids, and spires, 1651–1 709 347 Appendix D: Enlargements of meetingh ouses in New En gland by cutting the frame, 1723– 1824 348 Appendix E: Citations of exterior painting, 1678–1 828 350 Appendix F: Citations of interior painting, 1656–1 817 359 Appendix G: Meetingh ouse replications in New En gland, 1647–1 828 364 Notes 375 Works Cited 403 Ac knowl edg ments 429 Index 431 Fully annotated versions of Appendixes B-G and a complete bibliography, including sources cited only in the appendixes, are available online at http://scholarworks.umass.edu/umpress. MEETINGH OUSES OF EARLY NEW EN GLAND (cid:2) or. h ut a e h y t b p a M xt. e e t h n t d i e cit d n a gl n E w e N n er h ut o s n s i n o ati c o n l w o T INTRODUCTION A New Eng land Icon Reconsidered (cid:2) The New England meetingh ouse has long held a place in the American imagination as a cultural and historical icon. Meetingh ouses have stood for the community. They have enshrined traditional New En gland religious values. They have been a symbol of permanence, stability, democracy, and religious reform. From their belfries could be seen the spires of meetingh ouses in adjoin- ing parishes, a meta phorical link to an orderly network of “primitive” Christian communities and a visual link to the Baroque and Italianate taste of Eng lish architects, such as Christopher Wren and James Gibbs. The meetingh ouse bell, the emblematic center of each community, summoned parishioners to the Sab- bath meeting, marked days of fasting and thanksgiving, accompanied funerals, and warned of emergencies. These iconic features w ere eulogized by nineteenth- century New Eng land parish and town historians—t hat wonderful generation of storytellers who loved to inform their readers that, as children, they were fi lled alternately with terror and hope that the sounding board would fall on the minister’s head and that the dropping of hinged pew seats sounded to them like the rattle of musket fi re.¹ A closer look at the evidence suggests that many of these ideas are unfounded or only partly true. The builders of most New Eng land meetingh ouses, for ex- ample, saw them as temporary structures; many had not even been completed when they w ere taken down and replaced by a larger one. And a widespread pattern of neighborly and sectarian rivalry challenges the notion that meeting- houses represented community stability. At least thirteen recorded instances are known when one faction of “aggrieved” neighbors stole, burned, or cut in half the principal timbers of a meetingh ouse on the night before its scheduled raising, hoping to see it relocated to a more desirable location.² One such faction so diverted the workers that a large section of the frame fell, injuring several people.³ Sectarian controversies w ere equally confrontational. In the 1790s Con- gregationalists and Baptists in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, vying for control of the town’s meetingh ouse, precipitated what historians later called the “longest 1

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