Chapter 5 - The First Church

The Town and the Church were in a hurry to remove Mills by December 1738, because they had already settled on his successor. The Church meeting on December 13 voted to offer the minister's job to Rev. John Hunt. A February Town Meeting concurred, but Hunt declined. Hunt apparently was preaching at the meeting house prior to that time and stayed through August after declining.
 

Several committees were chosen over the succeeding years to find a minister. None were successful. It is interesting to note the name of Elnathan Wight on such a committee in 1739. He was later to become the first Baptist minister and in 1737 had signed the Baptist covenant.
 

By 1743, the Town refused to choose a committee.
 

The Baptists had formed their own church in Bellingham in 1737 and by 1743 were constructing their own meeting house. They were also unable to find a minister and in 1743, in a spirit of ecumenical unity, an attempt was made to find some common ground.
 

"Bellingham, June the 24^th 1743
 

"We the Antepedo Baptist Church in Bellingham upon the Desier of the pedobaptist Church in the same Town. Concerning your settelling a minister you say you are not able to maintain a minister yourselves without wee will come in and joine with you. So far wee are willing to joine with you that is by subscription and when one year is out and then what to give the next year and so on untill the time shall come that we shall have one to settel over us in the gospel of our own Denomination provided that you can git Mr Reed or Mr Biriam either one of these two before mentioned and as near as we can be our part toward his suport as aford sd provided that we may have one of our owne Denomination to come four times in a year to Administer the word and ordinances to us provided that you will contribute to him to his suppor with us.
 

"Furthermore we are willing to give something to encorage either one of the above mentioned parsons to be your minister besides the subscription towards supporting him to preach the word of God to you and to us above mentioned where unto we have sett our Names
 

Total 35 - 10 - 0 43 - 10 - 0 total
 

"these of us that have sett our names would have this what we have Subscirbed to be understood to be in the old tenner."
 

In 1744 the Church and the Town voted to petition the General Court for relief. The petition was renewed each year until 1747 action was finally taken.
 

"Put to vote whether the Town will Petition that the ministerial Party may be anexed to such other Towns as Each of them shall desire to be laid shall desire to be laid as to ministerial afirs untill such times as we apprehend we are able to settle a minister among our selves. Pased in the affirmative."
 

"Put to vote whether the Town Desire that the Town may be freed from all presentments about ministerial affairs. Passed in the affirmative."
 

"The inhabitants of Bellingham who petitioned the General Court in January, 1747, to be set off to other precincts in ecclesiastical affairs were these:
 

To Wrentham, West Precinct
 

(Franklin)
 

Isaac Thayer
 

"Mar 2 1747 In Council. Ordered that these persons be annexed as desired."
 

The final decline of the First Church in Bellingham came the next year. A petition was made to permanently take a portion of Medway, Holliston (now Milford), Wrentham (now Franklin) and Bellingham and create a new church in West Medway.
 

"Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.
 

"To His Excellency William Shirley Esq Captain General and Governor &c The Hon. Council and House of REpresentatives in General Court Assembled at Boston Feb 28 1747-8.
 

"The Petition of the Subscribers a Committee in behalf of themselves & the others whose names are afterwritten to the Number of Forty nine all inhabitants of the Adjoining Towns of Medway Holliston Bellingham & in the westerly precinct of Wrentham.
 

"Humbly Showeth That Your Petitioners have for a long time conflicted with great hardships and difficulties in attending on the Public Worship of God by reason of the extraordinary Distances our habitations are from the meeting houses in our respective Towns and precinct: That it is almost impossible for us with our large Families ................. that we are able by the Blessing of heaven to settle and support the Gospel among ourselves; .................. That we have applied to the Towns and precinct to which we respectively belong to be made a Distinct Precinct by Ourselves unsuccessfully except in Bellingham, That Town having petitioned the General Court that the Inhabitants might be annexed to the Towns they severally congregate with, and an Act was passed for this purpose; That the Inhabitants of the West precinct of Wrentham are an able people ............ of about 100 families, and we ask for only 9; That the Inhabitants of Holliston are about 90 families; That the Inhabitants of Medway are good livers and more families than any of the other towns have. The Bounds to contain 49 families; in Medway 31, in Bellingham 10, in Wrentham 9, in Holliston 9. The center of which is 5 miles from any meeting, and very few families above 2 miles from ours proposed."
 

"Signed by a committee of four and forty-five others."
 

A second petition by Samuel Darling, Caleb Phillips, Jr., and John Corbet with Benjamin Partridge asked the General Court to refuse the new precinct because "We are in hope that in time we shall be able to settle and support a minister in our said Town by reason yt we have Considerable of Land which is not Improved which is likely to be settled in a little time by our Children or others Coming and settling among us."The General Court did not share the optomism of the latter. The West Parish in Medway was incorporated.
 

Bellingham was the first Massachusetts town to be allowed to eliminate its Puritan Church. It was left as the only community in the colony with only a Baptist congregation.
 

The division of the families to other churches was not the end of the parish. Preachers were heard sporadically in the old meeting house until its destruction in 1774. The official end came in 1755.
 

"To Mr Caleb Phillips for the Church of Christ in Bellingham, met Dec 10 1755. Beloved Brethren it is with Grief that I am necessarily absent from you but hereby send my mind viz. That I don't think it proper to dissolve until we have disposed of the church utensils and I think it would be proper to divide them, (ther now remaining but 8 male members at least into two equal parts if not into four, and deliver my part to Brother John Holbrook and all the rest as you may agree.
 

"As soon as that is done I should think proper by vote to dismiss & recommend each to the neighboring churches they desire in the usual manner, and me to the ch. in the Precinct in which I live, called the 2nd Precinct in Medway.
 

John Metcalf Moderator
 

"The utensils were divided January 6, 1756."
 

An attempt was made to revive the church in 1764. A petition of Bellingham inhabitants to the General Court requested the parish's restoration. The West Parish in Medway responded to a demand from the General Court for a reply by choosing a committee consisting of at least one Bellingham resident (Stephen Metcalf). Whatever their reply, it was successful and the parish was not reconstituted.
 

Other attempts over the next few decades to relocate the meeting house were usually thinly disguised plans to reestablish the parish. If the meeting house was moved north of the Charles River, families from Mendon and/or Medway might join the parish. None of the schemes succeeded and the parish disappeared.