large stick" Capt. Chas. Goodrich, two sills; Col. Oliver Root, "oak posts" and "oak plates"; two ladies, widows of old friends, Mrs. Stoddard and Mrs. Dickinson, united in contributing a pillar twenty feet long and a pine beam seventy feet; and Capt. Jared Ingersoll, one of the pillars of the belfry. All these persons were "allowed" for the value of their contributions in extinguishing their taxes; but as it was for the house of the Lord, they took good care to bring of their best, and managed to get a good deal of pleasure out of the preparation and bringing. Though they didn't bring forth "the top stone with shouting," they did bring in massive doorsteps from quarries in the next town — Richmond — with a long string of oxen and much hilarity, when the church was finished in 1793. The design was from the hand of Chas. Bulfinch, of Boston, a really educated and superior architect, the architect of the Massachusetts State House, and the workmanship was so thorough that it stands to-day, a hundred years old, a stanch and useful building, though long ago removed and diverted to other uses.
People who have had much to do with the building of country churches know that there is generally a quarrel over the location. This enlivening feature was not lacking here. Should the new building be placed a few feet farther forward than the old one, it could be seen from a long distance by people approaching on West Street; and the "west part" contained many citizens of substance and consideration. Twenty-three voters requested a town meeting, and succeeded in carrying a vote that the front of the meeting-house should be carried forward seven feet. And now behold the power of vigorous protest! In order to do this the beautiful elm-tree that had been spared in the original denudation, and that was one of the most charming objects to be seen from the west window of. Hon. John Chandler Williams's fine mansion, now standing at the head of East Street, was to be removed. It was a remarkable tree, "a smooth bare shaft of ninety feet, bearing for capital a leafy coronal of branches which carried its height to one hundred and twenty-eight feet." There are many testimonies extant to the heroic qualities of Mr. Williams's wife — Mrs. Lucretia Williams. The axeman appeared on the scene, and had already made three strokes. Mrs. Williams went out and passionately entreated him to desist, and threw herself between him and the axe, the tradition being that she said, "You'll have to cut through me first." She succeeded in procuring a reprieve for the tree till another town meeting could be called; and then her husband, who owned all the adjacent land, offered to give the town as much land south of the tree as the town would leave space between it and the meeting-house for a common. The generous offer was accepted, and in this way the town came to have the beautiful green oval in its centre, about which cluster the proudest memories of its past and much that is best in its life of to-day. Later on, the progress of denudation and settlement left the elm a solitary point in the upper air to attract the lightning; and after having been repeatedly struck and of course blighted, it was decided in 1864 that it was a menace to the safety of the people, and it was taken down; "and the tradition of its romantic salvation was corroborated by the scars of three axe strokes embedded in its annal of 1790." A microscopical count of its annual circles
