showed it to be at least three hundred and forty years old.
The site selected for the meeting-house was a ledge of limestone, and the month of May was spent in preparing a foundation. The principal charges recorded are for rum, powder, and wedges. All through the work rum formed a conspicuous item; one sample out of many is "£4 8s. for three hundred and fifty-two rations of rum in five weeks." Three shillings a day extra pay was voted in town meeting to David Ashley and Butler Goodrich, for performing the perilous services demanded in that day of hand-work, in constructing the roof and tower. One curious reminder of the old war times were certain packages of Continental money. The original value of the Continental money, sealed up in packages and passed down from treasurer to treasurer, was £3,097. The town voted to sell it and buy lead for the church with the proceeds, and it brought £40 10s., enough to pay for the lead and eleven pence over.
When the exterior of the house was completed, the "seating" question came to the front again. Since the first meeting-house was built, a great advance in democratic ideas had been made, as will be seen by the final plan adopted. A committee of eleven of the most weighty men in the community had been appointed to attend to the matter. They were unanimous in their ideas of the best way in which to divide the galleries; but the lower part of the house was a very different affair. They could not shake off the old aristocratic traditions, and. proposed a plan that made wide differences in the shape and size of the "wall" and the "body" pews. Their report was no sooner made than a set of petitioners asked for a town meeting to "see whether the town would reconsider its action, and adopt a more uniform plan for the body of the house"; and although no record of the town's vote is to be found, a plan of the house after its completion shows that the petitioners for the more uniform plan carried the day. But the invidious practice of allowing a committee to estimate a man's "dignity" and seat him accordingly was not uprooted till 1836. The pulpit was one of those high and narrow structures reached by a long flight of stairs, that Daniel Webster had in mind when he said that "one of the strongest arguments for the truth of Christianity was, that it had survived box pulpits so long." The town directed a pulpit cushion to be bought, a sweet-toned bell was hung, and the people were justly proud of their new meeting-house. The whole cost was £2,188 19s. 6d.
But they were not to be permitted to sit at ease in Zion. In the town meeting that voted the second assessment of taxes for the meeting-house, a protest had been presented, signed by several Episcopalians, Baptists, and Shakers, but universally understood to have come from the hand and mind of Mr. Van Schaack, saying that "as the subscribers to this paper are freeholders and inhabitants of the town aforesaid, differing in religious sentiments with those for whose use said place of worship is building, they do in this public manner disclaim any right or