Before this, committees had “dignified the meeting-house.” All persons of the age of fifty-six years and upwards were assigned to the first rank of seats, and all others were seated “according to the taxes they have paid toward building said Meeting-House.” We are told that in the early days of the colony the “dignifying the meeting-house,” that is, the seating people by certain grades of wealth, was unknown. It became common only after slavery was an established institution.
The people were for many years called to church by the beat of the drum. An appropriation was made for this when the church was organized, and, annually, the town appointed a person to beat the drum, and voted to pay him for the same.
This method may have been employed to remind the people that they belonged to the church militant. Certain it is, that the marching with measured tread to the martial sound was a fitting prelude to the grim and lengthy service awaiting them.
The meeting-houses were not heated till 1823, when two box stoves were put in the second meeting-house. No wonder our forbears developed strong and decided traits of character under such Spartan training!
The tithing man was an important factor in church work. As early as 1729 it was voted in town meeting “that James Hine have oversight of the female sex during exercises on the Sabbath.” We are left in painful doubt as to whether the “female sex” needed more oversight than the men. But a later vote recorded relieves our minds, for “two men were appointed to oversee the youth (males), and one for the female sex;” during service. So we may conclude our foremothers needed only half as much watching as the fathers and sons.
The law requiring the appointment of tithing men was passed in 1721. Earlier, it was customary in New England to appoint an officer to keep people from sleeping during the delivery of the sermon.
In 1745 the town voted that “any farmers, inhabitants, have leave to build a small house to repair to on the Sabbath Day, on the common land, provided the public is not damnified thereby.” This building was “north of the meeting-house on the side of the hill.” After the second church was built, in 1754, on “The Green,” opposite the spot now occupied by Mrs. Henry Bostwick’s residence, the Sabbath Day house was built on the site of Mr. James Orton’s present home on Bridge Street. These “Sabba’ Day houses,” as they were called, were an important institution in the Sunday life of those old days.
Here those living at a distance stored loads of wood and barrels of cider, refilled their foot stoves and rested between services.
This little intermission, in which the settlers took breath after the two hours’ sermon of the morning, and gained strength for the ninthlies and tenthlies of the afternoon, is a pleasant picture in the midst of the rigorous Sabbath. We like to think there was a little relaxation for the housewives in exchanging their doughnuts and Indian bread, and comparing receipts for the same, and, perhaps, indulging in a little week-day gossip, when James Hine was not at hand to “oversee.”
The most notable figure in the town was always the minister. He was the person, the “parson.” Even the “divinity that doth hedge a king” commands hardly more reverence than that which was paid to the early New England minister. The very children were taught to make obeisance to him as he passed along the street. An early rule of the New England churches read as follows: “If any person or persons shall be guilty of speaking against the minister, in any shape, form or manner, or of speaking against his preaching, said person or persons shall be punished by fine, whipping or banishment, or cutting off of ears.”