spective, would be likely to take a very different view. Two of them, Moses Graves and Solomon Stoddard, agreed each to furnish half the glass if 'the resident proprietors would enlarge the building, so that it would measure fifty-five feet one way and forty-five the other, and only cover it now and finish it hereafter; for, they said, "there is a prospect of a considerable number of others that will soon settle in said township." Other non-resident proprietors made other proffers of material which were rejected, and said that "the meeting-house would scarcely hold the people when sixty families should be in town." Their party alleged that "one of the inhabitants, not a proprietor of the settling lots, begged to be allowed to add twenty feet to the length at his own charge, which they utterly refused, greatly to the damage of the original proprietors and their assigns, upon whose lands in various parts of the town many were settling (1762), so that it was probable that the meeting-house would soon be useless." This twenty-foot addition seems ridiculously small in this day of splendid memorial buildings; but it was a magnificent offer in a place where there was but one saw-mill and next to no roads, and we do not wonder that the non-residents grumbled at its rejection.
That there was a determined party opposed to these larger views is apparent. A few days afterwards the settlers voted to build a house forty-five feet long, thirty-five wide, twenty post, and "to raise forty-five shillings on each lot to accomplish the work, half to be paid this year, half next." These dimensions finally took form in a meeting-house that was raised in the summer of 1761, and covered and floored, so that the town meeting in the following March was held
in it.
On June 15, 1761, in town meeting, it was resolved, "that four shillings be raised on each lot to pay for the raising of the meeting-house; and every man who comes early to have three shillings credit per diem, till the house be raised, and the committee to take account of each man's labor; the other shilling to be paid for rum and sugar." And so eighteen years after the first trees had been girdled to clear the fair spot that
