The New England Meeting-House

I.

WHEN the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, they at once assigned a Lord’s Day meeting-place for the Separatist church, — “ a timber fort both strong and comely, with flat roof and battlements; ” and to this fort, every Sunday, the men and women walked reverently, three in a row, and in it they worshiped until they built for themselves a meeting-house in 1648.

As soon as each successive outlying settlement was located and established, the new community built a house for the purpose of assembling therein for the public worship of God; this house was called a meeting-house. Cotton Mather saiti distinctly that he “ found no just ground in Scripture to apply such a trope as church to a house for public assembly.” The church, in the Puritan’s way of thinking, worshiped in the meeting-house, and he was as bitterly opposed to calling this edifice a church as he was to calling the Sabbath Sunday. His favorite term for that day was the Lord’s Day.

The settlers were eager and glad to build their meeting-houses; for these houses of God were to them the visible sign of the establishment of that theocracy which they had left their fair homes and had come to New England to create and perpetuate. But lest some future settlements should be slow or indifferent about doing their duty promptly, it was enacted in 1675 that a meeting-house should be erected in every town in the colony; and if the people failed to do so at once, the magistrates were empowered to build it, and to charge the cost of its erection to the town. The number of members necessary to establish a separate church was very distinctly given in the Platform of Church Discipline : “ A church ought not to be of greater number than can ordinarilie meet convenientlie in one place, nor ordinarilie fewer than may conveniently carry on church-work.” Each church was quite independent in its work and government, and had absolute power to admit, expel, control, and censure its members.

These first meeting-houses were simple buildings enough : square log houses with clay-filled chinks, surmounted by steep roofs thatched with long straw or grass, and often with only the beaten earth for a floor. It was considered a great advance and a matter of proper pride when the settlers had the meeting-house “lathed on the inside, and so daubed and whitened over workmanlike.” The dimensions of many of these first essays at church architecture are known to us, and lowly little structures they were. One, indeed, is preserved for us under cover at Salem. The first meeting-house in Dedham was thirty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high “ in the stud ; ” the one in Medford was smaller still; and the Haverhill edifice was only twenty-six feet long and twenty wide, yet “ none other than the house of God.”

As the colonists grew in wealth and numbers, they desired and built better sanctuaries, and the rude early buildings were converted into granaries or storehouses, or, as was the Pentucket meeting-house, into a “ house of shelter or a house to sett horses in.” As these meeting-houses had not been consecrated, and as they were town halls, forts, or court-houses as well as meetinghouses, the humbler uses to which they were finally put were not regarded as profanations of holy places.

The second form or type of American church architecture was a square wooden building, usually unpainted, crowned with a truncated pyramidal roof, which was surmounted (if the church could afford such luxury) with a belfry or turret containing a bell. The old church at Hingham, the “ Old Ship ” which was built in 1681, is still standing, a well-preserved example of this second style of architecture. These square meeting - houses, so much alike, soon abounded in New England ; for a new church, in its contract for building, would often specify that the structure should be “ like in every detaile to the Lynn meeting-house,” or like the Hadley, Milford, Boston, Danvers, or New Haven meeting-house. This form of edifice was the prototype of the fine great First Church of Boston, a large square brick building, with three rows of windows and two galleries, which stood from the year 1713 to 1808, and of which many pictures exist.

The third form of the Puritan meeting-house, of which the Old South Church of Boston is a typical model, has too many representatives throughout New England to need any description, as have also the succeeding forms of New England church architecture.

The first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, in the meadow lands; for the dwelling-houses must be clustered around them, since the colonists were ordered by law to build their new homes within half a mile of the meeting-house. Soon, however, the houses became too closely crowded for the most convenient uses of a farming community ; pasturage for the cattle had to be obtained at too great a distance from the farmhouse ; firewood had to be brought from too distant woods ; nearness to water also had to be considered. Thus the law became a dead letter, and each new-coming settler built on outlying and remote land, since the Indians were no longer so deeply to be dreaded. Then the meeting-houses, having usually to accommodate a whole township of scattered farms, were placed on remote and often highly elevated locations; sometimes at the very top of a long, steep hill, — so long and so steep in some cases, especially in one Connecticut parish, that church attendants could not ride down on horseback from the pinnacled meeting-house, but were forced to scramble down, leading their horses, and mount from a horse-block at the foot of the hill. The second Roxbury church was set on a high hill, and the story is fairly pathetic of the aged and feeble John Eliot, the glory of New England Puritanism, that once, as he toiled patiently up the long ascent to his dearly loved meeting, he said to the person on whose supporting arm he leaned (in the Puritan fashion of teaching a lesson from any event and surrounding) : “ This is very like the way to heaven ; ’t is uphill. The Lord by His grace fetch us up.”

The location on a hilltop was chosen and favored for various reasons. The meeting-house was at first a watchhouse, from which to keep vigilant lookout for any possible approach of hostile or sneaking Indians ; it was also a landmark, whose high bell-turret, or steeple, though pointing to heaven, was likewise a guide on earth, for, thus stationed on a high elevation, it could be seen for miles around by travelers journeying through the woods, or in the narrow, tree-obscured bridle-paths which were then almost the only roads. In seaside towns, it could be a mark for sailors at sea; such was the Truro meeting-house. Then, too, our Puritan ancestors dearly loved a " sightly location,” and were willing to climb uphill cheerfully, even through bleak New England winters, for the sake of having a meeting-house which showed off well, and was a proper source of envy to the neighboring villages and the country around. The studiously remote and painfully inaccessible locations chosen for the site of many fine roomy churches must astonish any observing traveler on the byroads of New England. Too often, alas ! these churches are deserted, falling down, unopened from year to year, destitute alike of minister and congregation. Sometimes, too, on high hilltops, or on lonesome roads leading through a tall second growth of woods, deserted and neglected old graveyards — the most lonely and forlorn of all sad places — by their broken and fallen headstones, which surround a halffilled-in and uncovered cellar, show that once a meeting-house for New England Christians had stood there. Tall grass and a tangle of blackberry brambles cover the forgotten graves, and perhaps a spire of orange tiger-lilies, a shrub of southernwood or of winter-killed and dying box, may struggle feebly for life under the shadow of the “ plumed ranks of tall wild cherry,” and prove that once these lonely graves were cared for and loved for the sake of those who lie buried in this now waste spot. No traces remain of the old meeting-house save the cellar and the narrow stone steps, sadly leading nowhere, which once were pressed by the feet of the children of the Pilgrims, but now are trodden only by the curious and infrequent passer-by, or the epitaph-seeking antiquary.

It is difficult often to understand the details in the descriptions of these early meeting-houses, the colonial spelling is so widely varied and so cleverly ingenious. Uniformity of spelling is a strictly modern accomplishment. “ A square roofe without Dormers, with two Lucoms on each side,” means, I think, without dormer windows, and with luthern windows. Another church paid a bill for the meeting-house roof and the “ Suppolidge.” They had “ turritts ” and “ turetts ” and “ turits ” and “ turyts ” and “ tyrryts ” and “ toryttes ” and “ turiotts ” and “ chyrits,” which were one and the same thing; and one church had orders for “ juyces and rayles and nayles and bymes and tymber and gaybels and a pulpyt, and three payr of stayrs,” in its meetinghouse, — a liberal supply of the now fashionable y’s. We read of “pinakles ” and “ pyks ” and “ shuthers ” and “ scaffills ” and “ bimes ” and “ lynters ” and “ bathyns ” and " chymbers ” and “ bellfers ; ” and often in one entry the same word will be spelt in three or four different ways. Here is a portion of a contract in the records of the Roxbury church : —

“ Sayd John is to fence in the Buring Plas with a Fesy ston wall, sefighiattly don for Strenk and workmanship as also to mark a Doball gatt 6 or 8 fote wid and to hing it.” “ Sefighiattly ” is “ sufficiently ; ” but who can translate “ Fesy ” ?

The church-raising was always a great event in the town. Each citizen was forced by law to take part in or contribute to " raring the Meeting hows.” In early days nails were scarce, — so scarce that unprincipled persons set fire to any buildings which chanced to be temporarily empty, for the sake of obtaining the nails from the ruins ; so each male inhabitant supplied to the new church a certain “ amount of nayles.” Not only were logs, and lumber, and the use of horses’ and men’s labor given, but a contribution was also levied for the inevitable barrel of rum and its unintoxicating accompaniments. “ Rhum and Cacks ” are frequent entries in the account books of early churches. No wonder that accidents were frequent, and that men fell from the scaffolding and were killed, as at the raising of the Dunstable meeting-house. When the Medford people built their second meeting-house, they provided for the workmen and bystanders five barrels of rum, one barrel of good brown sugar, a box of fine lemons, and two loaves of sugar. As a natural consequence, two thirds of the frame fell, and many were injured. Sometimes, as in Pittsfield in 1671, the sum of four shillings was raised on every acre of land in the town, and three shillings a day were paid to every man who came early to work, while one shilling a day was apportioned to each worker for his rum and sugar. At last no liquor was allowed to the workmen until after the day’s work was over, and thus fatal accidents were prevented.

The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows to admit the light. A Pilgrim colonist wrote to an English friend about to emigrate, “ Bring oiled paper for your windows.” Higginson, however, writing in 1629, asks for “ glasse for windowes.” When glass was used, it was not set in the windows as now. We find frequent entries of “ glasse and nayles for it,” and in Newbury, in 1665, the church ordered that the “ Glasse in the windows be . . . look’t to if any should happen to be loosed with winde to be nailed close again.” The glass was in lozengeshaped panes set in lead in the form of two long narrow sashes, opening in the middle from top to bottom, and it was many years before oblong or square panes came into common use.

These early churches were destitute of shade, for the trees in the immediate vicinity were always cut down on account of dread of the fierce fires which swept often through the forests and overwhelmed and destroyed the towns. The heat and blazing light in summer were as hard to bear in these unshaded meeting-houses as was the cold in winter.

We have all heard the theory advanced that it is impossible there should be any true religious feeling, any sense of sanctity, in a garish and bright light, — “ the white and undiluted day,” — but I think no one can doubt that to the Puritans these seething, glaring, pinesmelling hothouses were truly God’s dwelling-place, though there was no “ dim, religious light ” within.

Curtains and window blinds were unknown, and the sunlight streamed in with unabated and unbroken rays. Heavy shutters for protection were often used, but to close them at time of service would have been to plunge the church in utter darkness. Permission was sometimes given, as in Haverhill, to “ sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,”

— a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense solemn spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching in a neighboring church which was thus gloomily surrounded. He gave out as his text, “ Why do the wicked live ? ” and as he peered in the dim light at his manuscript, he exclaimed abruptly, “ I hope they will live long enough to cut down this great hemlock-tree back of the pulpit window.” Another minister, Dr. Storrs, having struggled to read his sermon in an ill-lighted, gloomy church, said he would never speak in that building again while it was so overshadowed with trees. A few years later he was invited to preach to the same congregation ; but when he approached the church, and saw the great tree still standing, he rode away, and left the people sermonless in their darkness. The chill of these sunless, unheated buildings in winter can well be imagined.

Strange and grotesque decorations did the outside of the earliest meeting-houses bear, — grinning wolves’ heads nailed under the windows and by the side of the door, while splashes of blood, which had dripped from the severed neck, reddened the logs beneath. The wolf, for his destructiveness, was much more dreaded by the settlers than the bear, which did not so frequently attack the flocks. Bears were plentiful enough. The history of Roxbury states that in 1725, in one week in September, twenty bears were killed within two miles of Boston. This bear story requires unlimited faith in Puritan probity and confidence in Puritan records to credit it, but believe it, ye who can, as I do ! In Salem and in Ipswich, in 1640, any man who brought a living wolf to the meeting-house was paid fifteen shillings by the town ; if the wolf were dead, ten shillings. In 1664, if the wolf-killer wished to obtain the reward, he was ordered to bring the wolf’s head and “ nayle it to the meeting-house and give notis thereof.” In Hampton, the inhabitants were ordered to nayle the same to a little red oake tree at northeast end of the meeting-house.” One man in Newbury, in 1665, killed seven wolves, and was paid the reward for so doing. This was a great number, for the wary wolf was not easily destroyed either by musket or wolf-hook. In 1723 wolves were so abundant in Ipswich that parents would not suffer their children to go to and from church and school without the attendance of some grown person. In 1718 the last public reward was paid in Salem for a wolf’s head, but so late as the year 1779 the howls of wolves were heard every night in Newbury, though trophies of shriveled wolves’ heads no longer graced the walls of the meeting-house.

All kinds of notices and orders and regulations and “ bills ” were posted on the meeting-house, often on the door, where they would greet the eye of all who entered : prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians, notices of town meetings, intentions of marriage, copies of the laws against Sabbath-breaking, messages from the Quakers, warnings of " vandoos " and sales, lists of the town officers, and sometimes scandalous and insulting libels, and libels in verse, which is worse, for our forefathers dearly loved to rhyme on all occasions. On the meeting-house green stood those Puritanical instruments of punishment, the stocks, whipping-post, pillory, and cage ; and on lecture days the stocks and pillory were often occupied by wicked or careless colonists, or those everlasting pillory replenishers, the Quakers. It is one of the unintentionally comical features of absurd colonial laws and punishments in which the early legal records so delightfully abound that the first man who was sentenced to and occupied the stocks in Boston was the carpenter who made them. He was thus fitly punished for his extortionate charge to the town for the lumber he used in their manufacture. This was rather better than “ making the punishment fit the crime,” since the Boston magistrates managed to force the criminal to furnish his own punishment. In Shrewsbury, also, the unhappy man who first tested the wearisome capacity and endured the public mortification of the town’s stocks was the man who made them. He “ builded better than he knew.” Pillories were used as a means of punishment until a comparatively recent date ; in Salem until the year 1801, and in Boston till 1803.

Great horse-blocks, rows of steppingstones, or hewn logs further graced the meeting-house green ; and occasionally one fine horse-block, such as the Concord women proudly erected, and paid for by a contribution of a pound of butter from each housewife.

The meeting-house not only was used for the worship of God and for town meetings, but it was a storehouse as well. Until after the Revolutionary War it was universally used as a powder magazine ; and indeed, as no fire in stove or fireplace was ever allowed within, it was a safe enough place for the explosive material. In Hanover the powder room was in the steeple, while in Quincy the “ powder-closite ” was in the beams of the roof. Whenever there chanced to be a thunderstorm during the time of public worship, the people of Beverly ran out under the trees, and in other towns they left the meeting-house if the storm seemed severe or near; still they built no powder houses. Grain, too, was stored in the loft of the meeting-house for safety; hatches were built, and often the corn paid to the minister was placed there. “ Leantos,” or “ linters,” were sometimes built by the side of the building for use for storage. In Springfield, Mr. Pyncheon was allowed to place his corn in the roof chamber of the meeting-house ; but as the people were afraid that the great weight might burst the floor, he was forbidden to store more than four hundred bushels at a time, unless he “ underpropped the floor.”

Within the meeting-house all was simple enough: raftered walls, sanded floors, rows of benches, a few pews, and the pulpit, or the “ scaffold,” as John Cotton called it. The bare rafters were often profusely hung with dusty spiders’ webs, and were the home also of countless swallows, that flew in and out of the open bell-turret. Sometimes, too, mischievous squirrels, attracted by the corn in the meeting-house loft, made their homes in the sanctuary: and they were so prolific and so omnivorous that the Bible and the pulpit cushions were not safe from their nibbling attacks. On every Sunday afternoon the Word of God and its sustaining cushion had to be removed to the safe shelter of a neighboring farmhouse or tavern, to prevent total annihilation by these Puritanical, Bible-loving squirrels.

The pulpits were often pretentious, even in the plain and undecorated meeting-houses, and were usually high desks, to which a narrow flight of stairs led. In the churches of the third stage of architecture, these stairs were often inclosed in a towering hexagonal mahogany structure, which was ornamented with pillars and panels. Into this the minister walked, closed the door behind him, and invisibly ascended the stairs ; while the children counted the seconds from the time he closed the door until his head appeared through the trap-door at the top of the pulpit. The form known as a tub-pulpit was very popular in the larger churches.

As the ceiling and rafters were so open and reverberating, it was generally thought imperative to hang above the pulpit a great sounding-board, which threatened the minister like a giant extinguisher, and was really as devoid of utility as it was curious in ornamentation. This great sound-killer was decorated with carved and painted rosettes, as in the Shrewsbury meeting - house ; with carved ivy leaves, as in Farmington ; with a carved bunch of grapes or pomegranates, as in the Leicester church; with letters indicating a date, as M. R. H. for March, in the Hadley church; with cords and tassels, with hanging fringes, with panels and balls ; and thus formed a great ornament to the church, and a source of honest pride to the church members. The clumsy sounding-board was usually hung by a slight iron rod, which looked smaller still as it stretched up to the high raftered roof, and always appeared to be entirely insufficient to sustain the great weight of the heavy machine. In Danvers, one of these useless though ornamental structures hung within eighteen inches of the preacher’s nose, on a slender bar thirty feet in length ; and every Sunday the children gazed with fascinated anticipation at the slight rod and the giant hexagonal extinguisher, thinking and hoping that on this day the sounding-board would surely drop, and “ put out ” the minister. In fact, it was regarded by many a child, though this idea was hardly formulated in the little brain, as a visible means of possible punishment for any false doctrine that might issue from the mouth of the preacher.

Another source of interest to the children in many old churches was the study of the knots and veins in the unpainted wood of which the pews and galleries were made. Age had developed and darkened and rendered visible all the natural irregularities in the wood, just as it had brought out and strengthened the dry-woody, close, unaired, penetrating scent which permeated the meeting-house and gave it the distinctive “church smell.” The children, and perhaps a few of the grown people, found in these clusters of knots queer similitudes of faces, strange figures and constellations, which, though conned Sunday after Sunday until known by heart, still seemed ever to show in their irregular groupings a puzzling possibility of the discovery of new configurations and monstrosities.

The dangling, dusty spiders’ webs afforded, too, an interesting sight and diversion for the sermon-hearing, but not sermon-listening, young Puritans, who watched the cobwebs swaying, trembling, forming strange maps of imaginary rivers with their many tributaries, or outlines of intersecting roads and lanes. And if little Yet-Once, Hate-Evil, or Shearjashub chanced, by good fortune, to be seated near a window where a crafty spicier and a foolish buzzing fly couid be watched through the dreary exposition and attempted reconciliation of predestination and free will, that indeed were a happy way of passing the weary hours.

II.

Perhaps no duty was more important and more difficult of satisfactory performance in the church work in early New England than “ seating the meeting-house.” Our Puritan forefathers, though bitterly denouncing all forms and ceremonies, were great respecters of persons ; and in nothing was the regard for wealth and position more fully shown than in designating the seats in which each person should sit during public worship. A committee of dignified and influential men was appointed to assign irrevocably to each person his or her seat, according to rank and importance. Whittier wrote of this custom : —

In many cases the members of the committee were changed each year or at each fresh seating, in order to obviate any of the effects of partiality through kinship, friendship, personal esteem, or debt. A second committee was also appointed to seat the members of committee number one, in order that, as Haverhill people phrased it, “there may be no Grumbling at them for picking and placing themselves.”

This seating committee sent to the church the list of all the attendants and the seats assigned to them, and when the list had been twice or thrice read to the congregation, and nailed on the meeting-house door, it became a law. Then some such order as this of the church at Watertown was passed: “It is ordered that the next Sabbath Day every person shall take his or her seat appointed to them, and not go to any other seat where others are placed : And if any one of the inhabitants shall act contrary, he shall for the first offence be reproved by the deacons, and for a second pay a fine of two shillings, and a like fine for each offence ever after.” This town’s order was very lenient. In many towns the punishments and fines were much more severe. Two men of Newbury were in 1669 fined £27 4s. each for “ disorderly going and setting in seats belonging to others.” They were dissatisfied with the seats assigned to them by the seating committee, and openly and defiantly rebelled.

In all the Puritan meetings, as then and now in Quaker meetings, the men sat on one side of the meeting-house and the women on the other ; and they entered by separate doors. It was a great and much-contested change when men and women were ordered to sit together “ promiscuoslie.” In front, on either side of the pulpit (or very rarely in the foremost row in the gallery), was a seat of highest dignity, known as the “ foreseat,” in which only the persons of greatest importance in the community sat.

Sometimes a row of square pews were built on three sides of the ground floor, and were each occupied by separate families, while the pulpit was on the fourth side. If any man wished such a private pew for himself and family, he obtained permission from the church and town, and built it at his own expense. Immediately in front of the pulpit was either a long seat or a square inclosed pew for the deacons, who sat facing the congregation. This was usually a foot or two above the level of the other pews, and was reached by two or three steep, narrow steps. On a still higher plane was a pew for the ruling elders, when ruling elders there were. What we now consider the best seats, those in the middle of the church, were in olden times the free seats.

Usually, on one side of the pulpit was a square pew for the minister’s family. When there were twenty-six children in the family, as at least one New England parson could boast, and when ministers’ families of twelve or fourteen children were far from unusual, it is no wonder that we find frequent votes to “ inlarge the ministers wives pew the breadth of the alley,”or to “take in the next pue to the ministers wives pue into her pue.” The seats in the gallery were universally regarded in the early churches as the most exalted, in every sense, in the house, with the exception, of course, of the dignity-bearing foreseat and the few private pews.

It is easy to comprehend what a source of disappointed anticipation, heart-burning jealousy, offended dignity, unseemly pride, and bitter quarreling this method of assigning seats, and ranking thereby, must have been in those little communities. How the goodwives must have hated the seating committee ! Though it was expressly ordered, when the committee rendered their decision, that “ the inhabitants are to rest silent and sett down satysfyed,” who can still the tongue of an envious woman or an insulted man ? Though they were Puritans, they were first of all men and women, and complaints and revolts were frequent. Judge Sewall records that one indignant dame “ treated Captain Osgood very roughly on account of seating the meeting house.” To her the difference between a seat in the first and one in the second row was immeasurably great. It was not alone the scribes and Pharisees who desired the highest seats in the synagogue.

It was found necessary at a very early date to “ dignify the meeting,” which was to make certain seats, though in different localities, equal in dignity ; thus could peace and contented pride be partially restored. For instance, the seating committee in the Sutton church used their “ best discresing,” and voted that “ the third seat below be equal in dignity with the foreseat in the front gallery, and the fourth seat below be equal in dignity with the foreseat in the side gallery,” etc., thus making many seats of equal honor. Of course wives had to have seats of equal importance with those of their husbands, and each widow retained the dignity apportioned to her in her husband’s lifetime. We can well believe that much “ discresing ” was necessary in dignifying as well as in seating. Often, after building a new meeting-house with all the painstaking and thoughtful judgment that could be shown, the dissensions over the seating lasted for years. The pacificatory fashion of “ dignifying the seats ” clung longin the Congregational churches of New England. In East Hartford it was not abandoned until 1824.

Many men were unwilling to serve on these seating committees, and refused to “medle with the seating,” protesting against it on account of the odium that was incurred, but they were seldom “ let off.” Sometimes the difficulty was settled in this way: the entire church (or rather the male members) voted who should occupy the foreseat or the highest pew, and the voted-in occupants of this seat of honor formed a committee, who in turn seated the others of the congregation.

In the town of Rowley, “ age, office, and the amount paid toward building the meeting-house were considered when assigning seats.” Other towns had very amusing and minute rules for seating. Each year of the age counted one degree. Military service counted eight degrees. The magistrate’s office counted ten degrees. Every forty shillings paid in on the church rate counted one degree. We can imagine the ambitious Puritan adding up his degrees, and paying in forty shillings more in order to sit one seat above his neighbor who was a year or two older.

In Pittsfield, as early as the year 1765, the pews were sold by “ vandoo” to the highest bidder, in order to stop the unceasing dissensions over the seating. In New London, two women, sisters-in-law, were seated side by side. Each claimed the upper or more dignified seat, and they quarreled so fiercely over the occupation of it that they had to be brought before the town meeting.

In no way could honor and respect be shown more satisfactorily in the community than by the seat assigned in meeting. When Judge Sewall married his second wife, he writes with much pride : “ Mr. Oliver in the names of the Overseers invites my Wife to sit in the foreseat. I thought to have brought her into my pue. I thankt him and the Overseers.” His wife died in a few months, and he reproached himself for his pride in this honor, and left the seat which he had in the men’s foreseat. “ God in his holy Sovereignty put my wife out of the Fore Seat. I apprehended I had Cause to be ashamed of my Sin and loath myself for it, and retired into my Pue,” which was of course less dignified than the foreseat.

Often, in thriving communities, the “ pues ” and benches did not afford seating room enough for the large number who wished to attend public worship, and complaints were frequent that many were “ obliged to sit squeased on the stairs.” Persons were allowed to bring chairs and stools into the meeting-house, and place them in the “ alleys.” These extra seats became often such encumbering nuisances that in many towns laws were passed abolishing and excluding them, or, as in Hadley, ordering them “back of the women’s seats.”In 1759 it was ordered in that town to “ clear the Alleys of the meeting-house of chairs and other Incumbrances.” Where the chairless people went is not told; perhaps they sat in the doorway, or, in the summer time, listened outside the windows. One forward citizen of Hardwicke had gradually moved his chair down the church alley, step by step, Sunday after Sunday, from one position of dignity to another still higher, until at last he invaded the deacons’ seat. When, in the year 1700, this honored position was forbidden him, in his chagrin and mortification he committed suicide by hanging.

The young men sat together in rows, ami the young women in corresponding seats on the other side of the house. In 1677 the selectmen of Newbury gave permission to a few young women to build a pew in the gallery. It is impossible to understand why this should have roused the indignation of the bachelors of the town, but they were excited and angered to such a pitch that they broke a window, invaded the meetinghouse, and “ broke the pue in pessis.” For this sacrilegious act they were fined £10 each, and sentenced to be whipped or pilloried. In consideration, however, of the fact that many of them had been brave soldiers, the punishment was omitted when they confessed and asked forgiveness. This episode is very comical; it exhibits the Puritan youth in such an ungallant and absurd light. When, ten years later, permission was given to ten young men, who had sat in the “ foure backer seats in the gallery,” to build a pew in “ the hindermost seat in the gallery behind the pulpit,” it is not recorded that the Salem young women made any objection. In the Woburn church, the four daughters of one of the most respected families in the place received permission to build a pew in which to sit. Here also such indignant and violent protests were made by the young men that the selectmen were obliged to revoke the permission. It would be interesting to know the bachelors’ objections to young women being allowed to own a pew, but no record of their reasons is given. Bachelors were so restricted and governed in the colonies that perhaps they resented the thought of any freedom being allowed to single women. Single men could not live alone, but were forced to reside with some family to whom the court assigned them, and to do in all respects just what the court ordered. Thus, in olden times, a man had to marry to obtain his freedom. In Haverhill, in 1708, young women were permitted to build pews, provided they did not “ damnify the Stairway.” This somewhat profane - sounding restriction they heeded, and the Haverhill maids occupied their " pue ” unmolested. Medford young women, however, in 1701, when allowed only one side gallery for seats, while the young men wore assigned one side and all the front gallery, made such an uproar that the town had to call a meeting, and restore to them their “ woman’s rights ” in half the front gallery.

Infants were brought to church in their mothers’ arms, and on summer days the young mothers often sat at the meeting-house door or in the porch, — if porch there were, — where, listening to the word of God, they could attend also to the wants of their babes. I have heard, too, of a little cage, or frame, which was to be seen in the early meeting-houses, for the purpose of holding children who were too young to sit alone, — poor Puritan babies ! Little girls sat with their mothers or elder sisters on “ crickets ” within the pews, or on threelegged stools and low seats “ in the alley without the pues.”

But the boys, the Puritan boys, those wild animals who were regarded with such suspicion, such intense disfavor, by all elderly Puritan eyes, and who were publicly stigmatized by the Duxbury elders as " ye wretched boys on ye Lords Day,” were herded by themselves. They usually sat on the pulpit and gallery stairs, and constables or tithingmen were appointed to watch over them and control them. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered that “ all ye boyes of ye towne are and shall be appointed to sitt upon ye three pair of stairs in ye meeting house on ye Lords Day, and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boyes yt sitte upon ye pulpit stairs. Reuben Guppy is to look and order soe many of ye boyes as may be convenient, and if any are unruly, to present their names, as the law directs.” Nowadays we should hardly seat boys in a group if we wished them to be orderly and decorous, and I fear the man “ by the name of Guppy” found it no easy task to preserve order and due gravity among the Puritan boys in Salem meeting. In fact, the rampant boys behaved thus badly for the very reason that they were seated together instead of with their respective families; and not until the fashion was universal of each family sitting in a pew or group by itself did the boys in meeting behave like human beings rather than like mischievous and unruly monkeys.

In Stratford, in 1660, a tithingman was “ appointed to watch over the youths or disorderly carriage, and see that they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps and blows as in his discretion meet.”

I like to think of those rows of soberfaced Puritan boys seated on the narrow, steep pulpit stairs; clad in kneebreeches and homespun flapped coats, and with round cropped heads, miniature likenesses in dress and countenance (if not in deportment) of their grave, stern, God-fearing fathers. Though they were of the sober Puritan blood, they were boys, and they wriggled and twisted, and scraped their feet noisily on the sanded floor ; and I know full well that the square-toed shoes of one in whom “ original sin ” waxed powerful thrust many a sly dig in the ribs and back of the luckless soul who chanced to sit in front of and below him on the pulpit stairs. Many a dried kernel of Indian corn was surreptitiously snapped at the head of an unwary neighbor, and many a sly word was whispered and many a furtive but audible “ snicker ” elicited when the dread tithingman was “ having an eye-out ” and administering “ discreet raps and blows ” elsewhere.

One of these wicked youths in Andover was brought before the magistrate, and it was charged that he “ Sported and played and by Indecent Gestures and Wry Faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the Beholders.” Those who laughed at any such misdemeanors were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine of five shillings for “ Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House in time of Public Worship,” and a boy at the same time, for the same offense, paid a fine of ten shillings. Perhaps he laughed louder and longer. In a law book in which Jonathan Trumbull recorded the smaller cases which he tried as justice of the peace was found this entry : “ His Majesties Tithing man entered complaint against Jona. and Susan Smith, that on the Lords Day during Divine Service, they did smile.” They were found guilty, and each was fined five shillings and costs, — poor smiling Susan and Jonathan.

Those wretched Puritan boys whittled, too, and cut the woodwork and benches of the meeting-house in those early days, just as their descendants have ever since hacked and cut the benches and desks in country school-houses (though how they ever eluded the vigilant eye and ear of the ubiquitous tithingman long enough to whittle will ever remain an unsolved mystery of the past). This early forerunning evidence of what has become a characteristic Yankee trait and habit was so annoyingly and extensively exhibited in Medford in 1729 that an order was passed to prosecute and punish “ all who cut the seats in the meeting house.”

Few towns were content to have one tithingman and one staff, but ordered that there should be a guardian set over the boys in every corner of the meeting-house. In Hanover it was ordered “ That there be some sticks set up in various places in the meeting house, and fit persons by them and to use them.” I doubt not that the sticks were well used, and Hanover boys were well rapped in meeting.

The Norwalk people come down through history shining with a halo of gentle clemency, for their tithingman was ordered to bear a short small stick only, and he was “ Desired to use it with clemency.” However, if any boy proved “incoridgable,”he could be “presented ” before the elders; and perhaps he would rather have been treated as were Hartford boys by cruel Hartford church folk, who ordered that if “ any boye be taken playing or misbehaving himself, he shall be punished presently before the assembly depart.” Parson Chauncey, of Durham, when a boy misbehaved in meeting, and was “ punched up ” by the tithingman, often stopped in his sermon, called the godless young offender by name, and asked him to come to the parsonage the next day. Some very gentle and beautiful lessons were taught to these Durham boys at these Monday morning interviews, and have come down to us in tradition; and the good Mr. Chauncey stands out a shining light of Christian patience and forbearance at a time when every other New England minister, from John Cotton down, preached and practiced the stern repression and sharp correction of all children, and chanted together in solemn chorus, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.”

One vicious tithingman invented, and was allowed to exercise on the boys, a punishment which was the refinement of cruelty. He walked up to the laughing, sporting, or whittling boy, took him by the collar or the arm, led him ostentatiously across the meeting-house, and seated him by his shamefaced mother on the women’s side. It was as if one grandly proud in kneebreeches should be forced to walk abroad in petticoats. Far rather would the disgraced boy have been whacked soundly with the heavy knob of the tithingman’s staff, for bodily pain is soon forgotten, while mortifying abasement lingers long.

The tithingman could also take any older youth who misbehaved or “ acted unsivill ” in meeting from his manly seat with the grown men, and force him to sit again with the boys ; “ if any over sixteen are disorderly, they shall be ordered to said seats.” Not only could these men of authority keep the boys in order during meeting, but they also had full control during the nooning, and repressed and restrained and vigorously corrected the luckless boys during the midday hours. When seats in the galleries grew to be regarded as inferior to seats and pews on the ground floor, the boys, who of course must have the worst seats in the house, were relegated from the pulpit stairs to pews in the gallery, and these square shut-off pews grew to be what Dr. Porter called “ the Devil’s play-houses,” and turbulent outbursts were frequent enough.

The fashion of seating the boys in pews by themselves was slow of abolishment in many of the churches. In Windsor, Connecticut, “boys pews” were a feature of the church until 1845. As years rolled on, the tithingmen became restricted in their authority: they could no longer administer “raps and blows;” they were forced to content themselves with loud rappings on the floor, and pointing with a staff or with a condemning finger at the misdemeanant. At last the deacons usurped these functions, and if rapping and pointing did not answer the purpose of establishing order (if the boy “ psisted ”) led the stubborn offender out of meeting; and they had full authority soundly to thrash the “ wretched boy ” on the horse-block. Rev. Dr. Dakin tells the story that, hearing a terrible noise and disturbance whilst he was praying in a church in Quincy, he felt constrained to open his eyes to ascertain the cause thereof; and he beheld a red-haired boy firmly clutching hold of the railing on the front edge of the gallery, while a venerable deacon as firmly clutched the boy. The young rebel held fast, and the correcting deacon held fast also, until at last the balustrade gave way, and boy, deacon, and railing fell together with a resounding crash. Then, rising from the wooden débris, the thoroughly subdued boy and the triumphant deacon left the meeting-house to finish their little affair; and unmistakable swishing sounds, accompanied by loud wails and whining protestations, were soon heard from the region of the horse-sheds. Parents never resented such chastisings; it was expected, and even desired, that boys should be whipped freely by every school-master and person of authority who chose so to do.

In some old church orders for seating, boys were classed with negroes, and seated with them ; but in nearly all towns the negroes had seats by themselves. The black women were all seated on a long bench or in an inclosed pew labeled “ B. W.,” and the negro men in one labeled “ B. M.” One William Mills, a jesting soul, being asked by a pompous stranger where he could sit in meeting, told the visitor that he was welcome to sit in Bill Mills’ pew, and that it was marked “ B. M.”The man, who chanced to be ignorant of the local custom of marking the negro seats, accepted the kind invitation, and seated himself in the black men’s pew, to the delight of Bill Mills, the amusement of the boys, the scandal of the elders, and his own disgust.

Sometimes a little pew or short gallery was built high up among the beams and joists over the staircase which led to the first gallery, and was called the “swallows nest,” or the “roof pue,” or the “ second gallery.” It was reached by a steep, ladder-like staircase, and was often assigned to the negroes and Indians of the congregation.

Often “ ye seat between ye Deacons seat and ye pulpit is for persons hard of hearing to sett in.” In nearly every meeting a bench or pew full of aged men might be seen near the pulpit, and this seat was called, with Puritan plainness of speech, the “ Deaf Pew.” Some very deaf church members (when the boys were herded elsewhere) sat on the pulpit stairs, and even in the pulpit, alongside the preacher, where they disconcertingly upturned their great tin ear-trumpets directly in his face. The persistent joining in the psalm-singing by these deaf old soldiers and farmers was one of the bitter trials which the leader of the choir had to endure.

The singers’ seats were usually in the galleries; sometimes upon the ground floor, in the “ hind-row on either side.” Occasionally the choir satin two rows of seats that extended quite across the floor of the house, in front of the deacons’ seat and the pulpit. The men singers then sat facing the congregation, while the women singers faced the pulpit. Between them ran a long rack for the psalm-books. When they sang they stood up, and bawled and fugued in each other’s faces. Often a square pew was built for the singers, and in the centre of this inclosure was a table, on which were laid, when at rest, the psalm-books. When they sang, the singers thus formed a hollow square, as does any determined band, for strength.

One other seat in the old Pilgrim meeting-house — a seat of gloom — still throws its darksome shadow down through the years, the stool of repentance. “ Barbarous and cruel punishments ” were forbidden by the statutes of the new colony, but on this terrible soul-rack the shrinking, sullen, or defiant form of some painfully humiliated man or woman sat, crushed, stunned, stupefied, by overwhelming disgrace, through the long Christian sermon; cowering before the hard, pitiless gaze of the assembled and godly congregation, and the cold rebuke of the pious minister’s averted face ; bearing on the poor sinful head a deep-branding paper inscribed in “ Capitall Letters” with the name of some dark or mysterious crime, or wearing on the sleeve some strange and dread symbol, or on the breast a scarlet letter. Let us thank God that these soulblasting and hope-killing exposures,— so degrading to the criminal, so demoralizing to the community, — these foul, inhuman blots on our fair and dearly loved Puritan Lord’s Day, were never frequent, nor did the form of punishment obtain for a long time. In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle alley of the Salem meeting-house, having on their heads a paper bearing the name of their awful crime. This is the latest record of this punishment that I have chanced to see.

Thus, from old church and town records, we plainly discover that each laic, deacon, elder, criminal, singer, and even the ungodly boy had his allotted place as absolutely assigned to him in the old meeting-house as was the pulpit to the parson.

Much has been said in semi-ridicule of this old custom of “ seating ” and “dignifying,” yet it did not in reality differ much from our modern way of selling the best pews to whoever will pay the most. Perhaps the old way was the better, since, in the early churches, age, education, dignity, and reputation were considered as well as wealth.

Alice Morse Earle.