He was dismissed, but held on to the real estate, and for several, years there was an uncertainty about the title of these lands. The town, in 1796, petitioned to the General Court to confirm Mr. Todd’s title, and so unravel the snarl. The “minister’s lot” now constitutes the town farm, on the east road.

An old burying ground is near the site of this log church, and the bones of many of the forefathers of the hamlet repose there. The first burials from the village were doubtless made there.

The Friends society in South Adams was formed in 1781, and worshipped in a log cabin until 1786, when they erected the house now standing about half a mile northwest of the center of that village. The families of David Anthony, Isaac Killy, Isaac Upton, Joshua Lapham and Adam Harkness constituted the society at its first organization. Robert Nesbit was their first recommended speaker. He was succeeded by Mary Beatty, and the third was David Aldrdge. These Friends, or Quakers were principally from Rhode Island, and with their kindly ways, their sound morality, their hatred of aristocracy and humbug generally, and their thrifty habits, were a desirable acquisition to the town. Residing mainly at Adams, their further history will have to be postponed.

About the year 1782 the inhabitants of this village, of various religious sentiments, raised and covered the frame of a meeting house, 38 feet long, by “30 wide, on the site of the William Blackinton house, on Church street. It stood without windows or doors until 1795, when the people subscribed a sufficient sum to remove it into the village and finish it. The job of moving was done by Captain Colgrove, the task occupying three days with a large force of men and thirty-five or forty yoke of oxen. The pine stumps oil the east side of Church street were cut down or smoothed off for the rollers to pass over, it being necessary to keep the highway clear. The site selected for the building was the present site of the Baptist church. Here the house was completed after a time. The floor was of loose boards, while the seats were, rude benches without backs. The house faced the south, and a porch was placed in front with stairways leading to the galleries. There were three aisles, fifteen windows, and about four hundred persons, could be seated. The pews were finished off in a large, oblong form with seats on three sides, one side being reserved for the pew door, so that when the house was very full part of the audience sat with their backs to the speaker. The galleries being wide and rather low, some of those who sat in the pews nearest the wall could not see the preacher. The gallery pews were finished in similar style to those on the floor, and the seats being as “square as a brick” and as hard as the good, sound lumber of those days was apt to be, the accommodations for sleeping was not by any means up to the modern fashionable standard. In the winter the women carried foot stoves, while in the summer both boys and girls went barefooted until well into their “teens.” “Old enough to go to meeting barefooted,” was not an unmeaning joke. For thirteen years after the removal of this meeting-house into tho village (or until 1808) there was no regular organized church in North Adams. A Baptist preacher named Dyer Stark was employed to preach a part of the time here and a part of the time in Stamford, Vt. Elder Amos Bronson also preached here, and various itinerants of different creeds held forth as opportunity offered. The pews having been sold to villagers of no exclusive faith, the house was opened whenever a request came from the proper source.

It is stated that the early settlers held meetings more frequently and exhibited a deeper religious zeal when their provisions became short and their garments ragged. This has been the case with all communities from the Jews of antiquity down to the Americans of the present day. In men’s distress they “call upon the name of the Lord,” and too often forget Him when they are relieved.

By reference to a previous page of this sketch it will be seen that the old meeting-house, which was the only one in this village, had been moved in 1794 or ’95 to the site of the present edifice on Church hill. It was occupied as a house of worship, with occasional preaching, but without any organized church, for fourteen years.

On the 30th of October, 1808, a Baptist church, consisting of twenty-two members, was organized by Elder Calvin Keyes. From its first organization until the year 1828 the whole number of persons who had belonged to it was 178. In consequence of removals