History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

50 HISTORY OF MIBDLESEX COUNTY.
oblige all ministers to have a license from that in-
stitution. Mr. Foster had ruling elders appointed
to assist him in bringing back to communion those
who absented themselves to hear the " itinerant
and disorderly preachers." He sometimes at-
tended the meetings himself to refute the speakers,
and on one occasion, announcing that he was the
minister of the town, took the chair and dismissed
the meeting.
Rev. Benjamin Willard preached at various
times, from 1830 to 1823, in the interest of the
Baptist denomination, and March 14, 1821, a society
was organized with twelve members. Mr.
Foster ruled his people with a rod of iron, and not
one was allowed to leave the church to join the
new society without a vote of public censure.
The first Baptist meeting-house was built in
1822, of brick, and stood wliere Mr. Jolni P.
Tuttle now lives; it was dedicated July 9, 1823,
when Rev. Amasa Sanderson was ordained, and
acted as pastor until March 23, 1831. The succeeding
ministers were Rev. Silas Kennev, 1831 -
1834; Rev. 0. Ayer, 1837-1843; Rev. T. H.
Lunt, April, 1844, to March, 1845 ; Rev. Aaron
Haynes, April, 1845, to , 1847 ; Rev. B. H.
Clift, June, 1847, to February, 1848 ; Rev. George
Mathews, May, 1848, to , 1852; Rev. F.
E. Cleaves, June, 1852, to October, 1857 ; Rev. D.
F. Lampson, July, 1858, to April, 1861; Rev. C.
M. Willard, August, 1861, to November, 1867;
Rev. C. L. Frost, August, 1868, to June, 1869
Rev. J. F. Morton, September, 1869, to Septem-
ber, 1872; Rev. B. N. Sperry, January, 1873, to
May, 1875 ; Rev. William Read, July, 1875, to
May, 1878; Rev. Paul Gallaher, November, 1878.
The brick meeting-house was burned, probably by
an incendiary, August 5, 1840, and tlie present
wooden one was then built at the Old Common,
and dedicated June, 1841.
In 1825 tlie town purchased a farm on wliich
to support the poor.
After tlie death of Mr. Foster the town voted,
October 29, 1827, to call Rev. William H. White to
settle as minister. He was born in Lancaster, Mass.,
ill 1798, and lived on a farm in Westminster until
twenty-one, when lie fitted for college under the
tuition of Rev. Dr. Stearns of Lincoln. Mr. White
graduated at Brown University in 1824, and at
Cambridge Divinity School in 1827 ; he received a
call to preach in Kingston, Mass., but preferred
Littleton, where he was ordained January 2, 1828.
We learn tliat it had long been his ambition
;
to settle in this town and win his predecessor's
daughter, Sarah Bass Foster, whom he married a
year after his ordination. He died July 25, 1853,
in the twenty-sixth year of his ministry. He was
succeeded by Rev. Frederick R. Newell, September,
1854, to November, 1856; Rev. Eugene Denor-
mandie, February, 1857, to July, 1863; Rev.
Albert B. Vorse, June, 1864, to June, 1869;
Rev. David P. Muzzey, October, 1869, to April;
1871 ; Rev. T. H. Eddowes, January, 1872, to
December, 1873; Rev. S. R. Priest, January,
1873, to August, 1874; Rev. J. Wingate Winkley,
March, 1876. Li 1841 the society took down
their old church and built the present one on the
same spot, tlie fourth building of the First Parish.
We iiave to record the formation, within a few
years of each other, of three other societies, viz.
the Universahsts, the Unionists, and tlie Orthodox
Congregational.
The Universalists held meetings in the Centre
school-house and in Chamberlin's Hall from 1830
until December, 1846, when they bouglit at auction
the meeting-house the Unionists had built a few
years previous, a short distance east of the present
union school-house, on the old road between the Cen-
tre and Common. The house was burned by an in-
cendiary in 1847, after which the society dispersed.
The Unionists, or Millerites, were an outcome
from the Baptists, in whose meeting-house William
Miller first preached in town. They built a small
meeting-house for tiiemsclves in 1840. Tlie con-
tinued existence of the world beyond the time they
had fixed for its destruction was a blow which the
society did not survive.
The Orthodox Congregationalists withdrew from
the First Church in 1840, and formed their society
March 23, and their church May 14, of that year.
They met in the hall over George Lawrence's Yellow
Store until the present meeting-house was
completed in the fall of 1841. Their pastors have
been Rev. J. C. Bryant, October, 1840, to March,
1845 ; Rev. James" M. Bacon, October, 1846, tou
November, 1849; Rev. Daniel H. Babcock, April,
1851, to February, 1853; Rev. Elihu Loomis,
October, 1854, , 1870; Rev. Henry E.
Cooley, May, 1872, to October, 1874 ;
Rev. George
E. Hall, September, 1875, to February, 1877;
Rev. William Sewall, March, 1877.
The Littleton Lyceum was organized December
2, 1829, through the efl'orts of Rev. Mr.
White, and has been continued every winter until
the present day. It was at tirst a debating society