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A History of the Clapboard Trees or Third Parish, Dedham, Mass (1887)
A History of the Clapboard Trees or Third Parish Dedham Mass - 1887 Author:George Willis Cooke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. REV. JOSIAH DW1GHT, THE FIRST MINISTER. After so long a struggle, the people at the Clapboard Trees had secured the desire of their hearts, a meeting-... more »house and a church of their own. Now began the process of building up their parish, completing their meeting-house, and establishing their church life. The destruction of the church records by fire in 1879, when the house then used as a parsonage was burned, makes it impossible to trace the history of the church as a distinct organization. Much might have been gleaned from them about the early history of the church and parish. In a sermon preached on the second Sunday of the year 1801, Mr. Thacher said that "the church records previous to his settlement in this place, were in a very imperfect state"; but they would have given us much of interest that we can only guess at now. How the church was organized we do not know; but its first deacons were Jonathan Onion and Joseph Ellis, the two men who had been most active in its formation, and who both lived under the very shadow of the meeting-house. Mr. White printed, in an. appendix to his Centennial Sermon of 1836, the Covenant of the church, otherwise it would have been lost. It shows a liberal spirit for the time in which it was written, and it contains but little of that abstract theology which usually forms the substance of creeds. It is a practical statement of a working Christianity, in the phraseology then common, and has an aim towards righteousness and godly living rather than in the direction of doctrine. It deserves to be reproduced here as a part of the history of the church, with the names of the original signers : —- We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, apprehending ourselves called of God into a sacred fellowship with one another in the profession and pr...« less