Meetinghouses of Early New England

458 Pages·2012·15.912 MB·English

by  Peter Benes

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