This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...part of the town, we now possess this new, commodious, and beautiful edifice, where, in the silence of retirement, yet in the centre of the territory of the metropolis, we may worship the Lord our God." i The First Church was not only the oldest in Boston, but older than the town itself, since it was gathered and ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...part of the town, we now possess this new, commodious, and beautiful edifice, where, in the silence of retirement, yet in the centre of the territory of the metropolis, we may worship the Lord our God." i The First Church was not only the oldest in Boston, but older than the town itself, since it was gathered and "imbodied" in Charlestown, under the shade of a tree, before Winthrop and his associates crossed the river. The ancient house they were leaving, the third they had occupied, was, when it i An Historical Sketch of the First Church in Boston, by Rev. William Emerson. was built (in 1713), President Porter says,3 the most expensive and elaborate in New England. It was placed, very fitly for the time, on Cornhill (now Washington Street), where Rogers' Building now stands, not far from the corner of State Street. But, with the growth of the town, Cornhill was getting crowded and noisy, and in 1808 the proprietors of the Old Brick (as the meeting-house was called) accepted the offer of Mr. Benjamin Joy to build for them a new meeting-house and a parsonage of brick, and also three other brick dwellinghouses, on the parish land in Summer Street; receiving in return the Cornhill property and $13,500 in cash. The old parish house was a gambrelroofed wooden building, standing in the middle of a piece of land nearly an acre in extent, belonging to the church, but "situate in the language of the deed from Richard Hollingshead and Ann. his wife, in 1680 at the southerly end of the town of Boston," namely, on Summer Street, where is now the corner of Chauncy Street, near half a mile from the meeting-house. In this house, which stood, villagefashion, back from the street, in an orchard and garden extending down to where Avon Street now is, ...
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