Book Description

Excerpt from An Historical Sketch of the Old Church, Quincy, Mass On the removal of the corner stairs, room was made for pews below and above. March an article in the warrant for a town meeting is in these words, To know if the Town will sell the floor where the stair ways was in the gallery. Whereupon, Voted that the floor where the old stair ways was, the vacancy in the gallery be appropriated for the use of the black people to sit in. Large square pews, somewhat elevated, were built in the corner of the west, or singers' gallery on this space here referred to; and the few colored persons in town were accustomed to sit there. In the appendix to the historical discourse in 1855, on the hundredth anniversary of the formation of the first church in Templeton, Mass, by Rev. Edwin G. Adams, junior pastor, may be seen a diagram on which these elevated corner pews are well represented. At a Town meeting May 5, 1800, just three months after the ordination of Rev. Mr. Whitney, Voted Moses Black Esq, Mr. Thomas Pratt, Peter B. Adams, Esq., be a committee, and are hereby empowered to sell the floor on the back part of the end galleries sufficient to make a row of pews of. This vote does not appear to have been carried into effect. No pews were ever built in the north or men's gallery. And in the south gallery, a few pews were, several years after, builtin the east end, leaving more than half the gallery in free seats for women. There was originally a row of pews on the back of the west gal lery, and several of them in the middle were subsequently taken away to leave more space for the singers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.