Chapter 5 - The First Church

By now it is obvious that the pulpit in Bellingham was not drawing many applicants. Those that were drawn were flawed, Smith by age, the next by unorthodoxy.
 

Rev. Robert Sturgeon was pursued with a series of sweeteners in February 1725. Upping the salary to 65£, it would increase by 5£ with the next 10 new families and to 80£ with 20 new families. In addition he was given "Eighty pounds f^r Incouragement in order to lie more comfortablement among us" and "twenty cord of firewood p^r year cut fit for his fire to be delivered at the place of his abode."
 

The salary was to be paid half in November and half in May, while the "incouragement" was to be paid in equal payments in consecutive Novembers.
 

Sturgeon accepted. The first Wednesday of November was set aside to install him.
 

The installation never occurred.
 

In 1722, Sturgeon, newly arrived from Ireland, had taken the pulpit of a church in Watertown before a group that was not recognized. Two churches were too close to each other and one was warned to move. 63 of the latter's members defied the General Court and hired Sturgeon, meeting in their old church. The Selectmen warned against him and eventually he was fined in court for preaching as a "pastor of a pretended church and disturbing this and other towns."
 

By 1725, Sturgeon had not been forgiven for this indiscretion. In that year he authored a pamphlet "A Trespass Offering humbly presented unto the churches of New England by Robert Sturgeon." In it he "With a true sense of my sins I now acknowledge them......I bewail my disorders, for which a council of churches has rebuked me: receiving a private and very irregular ordination, and joining a party in Watertown who cast contempt on the General Court, and I helped publish a pamphlet slandering the churches and Dr. Mather, and this party sent a remonstrance to the King."
 

A church council presided over by Cotton Mather accepted his confession in April 1725, but Bellingham was still warned away from him.
 

The parting did not appear to be quick or voluntary. The Town Meeting of March 1726, vorted his "dismissal" (more a release than a rejection at the time) with salary to that date.
 

The search continued.