History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

Perhaps tlie first instance of an installation in
the colony was that of Rev. John Bailey, at Water-
town, October 6, 1686, the usual method of induction
to clerical office being by ordination. He
was so popular that people ilocked to the communion
in such numbers that " the neigliborhood
could not supply elements enough." Born near
Blackbourne, Lancashire, England, in 1643, he had
been for fourteen years a preacher in Limerick,
Ireland, but, having been silenced and thrown into
prison for non-conformity, came to Boston in 1684.
Ill health and melancholy caused his return to that
place in 169;i, where he was assistant minister
of the First Church from 169.3 until his death,
December 12, 1697. His brother. Rev. Thomas
Bailey, " a painful preacher," was his colleague in
Watertown from November 2, 1687, until his
death, January 21, 1689; to whom Mr. Henry
Gibbs succeeded November 3, 1690. Mather,
alluding to the success of Mr. Bailey's ministry,
says, " He seemed rather to fish with a net than
with an hook for the Kingdom of God " ; and
John Dunton, wlio visited the brothers, thus refers
to them: "These are two popular preachers, and
are very generous to strangers. I heard Mr. John
upon these words, ' Looking unto Jesus,' and I
thought he spake like an angel."
Ever since Mr. Phillips' time there had been " an
earnest contending " about the place of meeting,
which was remote from the centre of the territory
and population of the town. The controversy cul-
minated when Mr. Bailey removed to Boston in
1692, and the erection of a new house was pro-
posed. The matter was referred to the governor
and council, who. May IS, 1693, advised the
building of a meeting-house for the whole town on
the knoll, between the house of Widow Stearns
and Whitney's Hill. The opposition to this plan
by the east part of the town was so fierce that a
town-meeting, held October 2, 1694, was obliged
to be adjourned, " to prevent such inconvenience
as might justly be feared by reason of the heat of
spirit that then seemed to prevail." Notwith-
standing the strong opposition, eighty-two resi-
dents of the easteru and thirty-three of the western
portions of the town uniting in a protest against it,
a levy was made and a house built on the south-
east corner of Lexington and Belmont streets, in
which a town-meeting was held December 20,
1695, and February 4, 1696, it was accepted by
the town as the place of public worship. In March
the town voted that town-meetings should in future
WATERTOWN. 451
be held in it. Mr. Samuel Angier, son of Edmund
Angler, of Cambridge, where he was born March
17, 1655, was called to preach in the new house
August 28, 1696, and ordained May 25, 1697.
Descended maternally from the famous Dr. Wil-
liam Ames, he was graduated at Harvard Col-
lege in 1673, was ordained at Rehoboth, October
19, 1679, and died in Watertown, January 21,
1719. When the town was divided, Mr. Angler's
society built their meeting-house in the West Precinct,
and it became the church of Waltham. Mr.
Angler's successor (1723 -1751) was Rev. Warhani
Williams, son of Rev. John, of Deerfield, who with
his family was carried away into captivity by the
Indians in 1704.
Mr. Gibbs, who had declined the offers of the
western party, and who was fully in sympathy with
the people at the east end of the town, to whom
he had preached in the old house for nearly seven
years, was ordained over the new society, organ-
ized here October 6, 1697. So much ill-feeling
had grown out of this quarrel that, though the day
was cold,.the ceremony, which took place in the
afternoon, was obliged to be performed in the open
air. The western party, having the selectmen on
their side, got possession of the meeting-house,
and would not suffer the assembly to enter there.
Henry, son of Robert Gibbs, a wealthy and promi-
nent merchant of Boston, graduated at Harvard
College in 1685, and died October 21, 1723, aged
fifty-five. His sound sense and discretion is seen
in the fact that, in the difficult position in which
he was placed, and amid the angry discussion and
strife that prevailed in the town during his min-
istry, he was held in the highest respect, and received
no word of censure from either faction. He
possessed warm piety, real kindness, and a well-
directed zeal in doing good. Though his habit
was to write his sermons on the bellows in the
chimney-corner, it should not be inferred that they
were at all inflated thereby, his pulpit ministrations
being highly esteemed both by his own and neigh-
boring parishes. His society, embracing the whole
of the Eastern Precinct, continued to occupy the
old meeting-house.
A Mr. Robert Sturgeon, having, " without due
advice and direction, gone on to the public actions
of a pastour" to a small number of brethren, who
had attempted the formation of a third church,
soon found himself in troubled \vaters. A council
of fourteen churches, convened at Watertown, May
1,1722, with Rev. Cotton Mather for moderator,