The
Story Of
Harpswell's Old Meeting House
1757 1759
A National Historic
Monument
In
1738 the Town of Yarmouth consisted of all the
territory between Falmouth and Cape Small Point
including the 99 islands in Casco Bay. By water
Cape Small Point was 16 miles from the meeting
house at North Yarmouth, and Harpswell 12. It is
not difficult to imagine the hardships of rising
long before dawn on cold Sundays, feeding the
family, dressing small children and rowing or
sailing through rough waters to attend church
where services were held for long hours in a
poorly heated building. While the early settlers
of Harpswell contributed to the support of this
preaching for a number of years, the hardships
involved forced them, in 1740, to petition for
separation in order to establish a parish of
their own. The Yarmouth town records show that in
1744 the town excused the Harpswell people from
paying the minister's rate for that year. And in
June 1749 the General Court passed an order
making Harpswell and the Islands a separate
parish.
Thus Harpswell became a
parish in 1751 and employed a minister of its
own, the Reverend Richard Pateshall, a Harvard
graduate who preached for about three years.
In 1753 the Reverend
Elisha Eaton was chosen to serve the parish. The
council that met to ordain him assembled in the
only house in Harpswell that had plastered rooms!
The need for an
adequate meeting house had been apparent for
several years when in 1757 plans were drawn up
and the Reverend Eaton, perhaps finding local
talent unavailable, enlisted his son and namesake
to help with the construction. According to his
diary, Reverend Eaton made the sashes and frames
for the building. On August 7, 1757, he recorded
the following: "getting stuff for window
frames and sashes for the meeting house . .
.." Nearly two years later on June 13, 1759,
he wrote "putting sashes on board vessel for
the Meeting House at Harpswell'. October 6 sailed
for Harpswell arrived there and tarried until
November 27th."
The Meeting House
interior was of the utmost simplicity. The high,
dark green, pulpit with its sounding board backed
by a multipaned arched window, was typical of
that period. Straight backed pews lined the
walls. Later, the original center pews were
removed to make room for the administration of
town business. The overhead beams were hand hewn,
joined and pegged. The boards, one and one half
inches thick, and the clapboards, were hand made
and extra thick to keep out the cold. In the
Deacon's box there is one floorboard 291/2 inches
wide. This may have been put there in an effort
to flout the law of the King, which made it a
serious offense to cut down a tree measuring more
than twenty-four inches. (The King had pre-empted
all trees over 24 inches in diameter for masts
for the British navy.)
Steep
stairs lead to a small landing where the narrow
stairway divides, one branch going sharply to the
right, the other to the left. The knees used to
reinforce the gallery suspension are still to be
seen. The balcony room on the left is now an
office for the Harpswell Selectmen
.
Only the finest
carpentry went into the pumpkin pine box pews for
which the original occupants bid as high as
$150.00 and also paid a fee each year for their
use. The narrow seats were guaranteed to keep
worshippers awake as well as to give them
backaches! The original ten foot high pulpit is
on a level with the gallery so that people up
there could hear. It's possible that its
elevation also gave the preacher a vantage point
to check on anyone who might not be as attentive
as he should be.
When the Reverend
Eaton died in 1764 his son Samuel was asked to
become the minister. He had graduated from
Harvard and had studied law and medicine as well
as for the ministry. He was thus not only a
parson of parts but also a lawyer and doctor,
both of which professions he practiced. Samuel
was a bachelor of Spartan habits who managed to
get along nicely on his salary of $325.00 per
year. His wig is now kept in the Meeting House,
as is his baptismal bowl, which he used in
baptizing over 1100 persons, an impressive number
for a preacher of that time and place. When his
pastorate ended with his death in 1822, he and
his father had occupied the pulpit for a total of
69 years.
Elisha Eaton is
buried in the old burying ground immediately
behind the Meeting House. The cemetery was in use
until about 1900 when it became necessary to
refuse further interments because old graves were
being uncovered whenever a new grave was opened.
In recent years the
cemetery has been well cared for. While many of
the graves were either unmarked or marked with
perishable wooden markers, there is still a
considerable number whose tombstones record the
names of the early settlers and later residents
of Harpswell.
This
story was written by Virginia Barnes Woodbury and
edited by Willan Roux for the Harpswell
Historical Restoration Committee, Inc.
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