Monterey Meeting Houses through History

This article is the first of a series about the history of Monterey United Church of Christ (MUCC) and the three Meeting Houses that the Monterey community has used for civic and religious functions since 1750. The Monterey Meeting House (MMH) steering committee is moving forward with planning for future ownership and stewardship of the building for ongoing community gatherings. The Monterey Historical Society is re-printing these informative articles to highlight the importance of the Meeting House to Monterey in the past and future. If you’re interested in learning more or helping with MMH’s efforts, please go to their website: montereymeetinghouse.org

These articles were originally written by Kathy Page Wasiuk and Delight Dodyk and printed in the Monterey News from October 1996 through May 1997 as part of the MUCC congregation’s outreach for their capital campaign for restoration and preservation work. The articles are reprinted with the permission of the authors.

Part I: In the Beginning … 

Monterey Church History, Part 1, Wasiuk, Kathy P., (originally printed in the Monterey News, Oct. 1996, pp-6-8)

It seems obvious that the history of a New England town and of its meeting house reflect each other, and that the shape and location of one changes with the other. So it is with Monterey.

Six years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the Dutch built a fort on the Hudson River where Albany now stands. This first interior settlement of the New Netherlands supported Dutch claims of all land eastward to the Connecticut River, territory eventually claimed by the Massachusetts Bay settlers. (Dutch assertion of ownership east of the Hudson proved extravagantly optimistic.) The English slowly pushed west beyond Springfield. Mountainous terrain, fear of Native American incursions from the north, and unpleasant relations with the neighboring Dutch proved to be formidable barriers to early permanent establishments in the hill country. Reports of those who passed through the mountains did not stir enthusiasm: in the mid 1690s, for example, Benjamin Wadsworth of Boston, accompanied by a guard of soldiers, crossed the province to Albany; he reported the journey as “most frightful” and returned home through Connecticut rather than repeat the experience (Scott, p. 10).

The Dutch eventually transferred to English claimants the right to negotiate with native people for title. Native Americans crossed regularly through the middle portion of what would become Monterey, following animal trails that became the so-called Great Path, and doubtless fished the lakes and hunted the game. Great Barrington and Sheffield had been purchased for £460, three barrels of cider, and thirty quarts of rum. (Giving cider and rum to Native Americans in payment for lands was a common practice of colonials, and a subversive one, given the debilitating effects of alcohol on a people unused to it.) A petition filed in the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1722 granted organizing rights for those two townships as Lower and Upper Housatunnuk. In June of 1737, negotiations by a lawyer and a soldier—Ephraim Williams, Esq., and Col. Nahum Williams—produced a further deed signed by Chief Konkapot, nine other Native American men, and one woman, granting land in exchange for £300. And so, a hundred years after Pilgrims covenanted together in Salem, a portion of the land ceded by Chief Konkapot was organized into a paper township by a simple act of the legislative pen.

Lines on Paper Create Boundaries... 

Township Number One (of four) came into being in response to demands to open land to settlement along a proposed road from Westfield to Sheffield. The first town meeting of Number One, held at the inn of Thomas Harrington in Watertown in October 1737, heard a report from William Chandler, surveyor, and the Committee to Survey regarding the twenty lots they had boundaried thus far. Within a month, there being no distinction between matters civic and ecclesiastic, the proprietors set aside two lots for the first and second ministers, and one for a meeting house.

 A meeting house was necessary for many reasons: certainly to fulfill Protestant belief in preaching the Gospel, but also to attract further settlers to the land the proprietors had recently acquired and now hoped to sell, as the building would be a visible sign of amenities the new community could offer. A meeting house had civic as well as religious functions— host to town meetings, emergency shelter, etc.—and a town could not be incorporated until a church had been built and a “learned and orthodox minister” settled and ordained there (Parker, p. 18). Voting to tax themselves for support of the proposed ministry and meeting house, the proprietors proceeded to sell lots to settlers with the tax (based on acreage) attached. Thus did church and commerce simultaneously organize the first plan for European settlement. 

 The town was subdivided into sixty-three lots, and when demand for land outstripped availability, the proprietors added seven more names to their lists, The town was further subdivided into house lots, town lots, and mill lots of seventy-five acres, created as squares on paper to be parceled out by auctions (November 15, 1737 through February 28, 1738) to the original proprietors. Four of these were clergymen: Rev. William Williams of Weston (who sold to Daniel Garfield), Rev. John Cotton of Boston, Rev. Warham Williams of Waltham (who sold to Jonas Brewer), and Jonathan Townsend of Needham. Proprietors could either retain or sell their rights to other speculators or to settlers; each head of household was required to give a £40 surety and a bond that he would “build and furnish a dwelling house upon his lot 18 foot square x 7 foot stud at least” and would within five years “improve five acres either by plowing or mowing or planting the same with English grass” and would guarantee to actually live on the lot (Myers, p. 5). Grantees could receive land in consideration of work undertaken opening a road through the Township, or for building and operating certain public utilities, like a mill.

The meeting house and the minister’s portion were centrally located. While theologically and politically apt, and logical on paper, the decision did not go far enough in considering terrain, and held serious implications for the future.

References: 

Tyringham Old and New, by John A. Scott, 1905

“The Mother Church,” by Deborah Parker, Berkshire Magazine, April/May, 1990