A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES IN MASSACHUSETTS, FROM 1620 TO 1858. WITH AN APPENDIX. BY Wrester JOSEPH S. CLARK, D.D., SECRETARY OF THE CONGREGATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. BOSTON: CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OF PUBLICATION. BX сь 1858 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: 7830 PREFACE. THE materials of this historical sketch - for it claims not the dignified name of History-began to accumulate on the writer's hands nearly twenty years ago. Called, in 1839, to the Secretaryship of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society, which at that time had eighty feeble churches under its patronage, I found a necessity laid upon me to investigate the causes of their weakness, in order to know how to meet their wants, to look into the sources of their troubles, the better to relieve them. In doing this, the history of at least eighty churches in Massachusetts was disclosed, and the leading facts penned down for practical use; while many of the disclosures revealed antecedent facts of equal interest pertaining to the history of other churches, from which these had sprung. By an habitual use of pencil and paper, with a natural fondness for compiling statistics, and the almost daily occasion for consulting them, it was found, at length, that the origin and general progress of nearly all the Congregational churches in the State had been jotted on these papers with more or less fulness and exactitude. A complete list, chronologically arranged, was made out several years ago, with a view to exhibit at one glance the comparative progress of church extension at different periods; and very important help it |