r. Seth Noble as a settlement providing he accept of
the call, one hundred and twenty Pounds currency.
4ly Voted to give Mr. Seth Noble yearly salary of sixty five
pounds currency so long as he shall continue our Minister to be in
Cash or furs or grain at cash price.
5ly. Chose Esqrs., Jacob Barker, Phinehas Nevers, Israel Pearly,
Deacon Jonathan Burpee and Messrs. Hugh Quinton, Daniel Palmer,
Moses Coburn, Moses Pickard a Committee to treat with Seth Noble.
6ly Adjourned the meeting to be held at the House of Mr. Hugh
Quinton on Wednesday ye 29 Instat, at four of the clock in the
afternoon to hear the report of the committee.
Met on the adjournment on Wednesday ye 29 of June 1774 and voted
as an addition to the salary of Mr. Seth Noble if he should except
of our Call, to cut and haul twenty five cords of wood to his
house yearly so long as he shall continue to be our Minister. The
meeting dissolved."
[Illustration: THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH AT SHEFFIELD.]
The call having been accepted by Mr. Noble, the people the following
year set about the erection of a meeting house, which was to serve
also as a residence for their pastor. In January, 1776, it was so far
advanced that the exterior was nearly completed, for in David Burpee's
book of accounts, under that date, there is a charge for work done by
Messrs. Plummer and Bridges in "clapboarding one third of the east end
of the meeting house." When finished the building was doubtless a very
unpretentious little structure not at all like a modern church edifice
and very unlike its successor, the Congregational church in Sheffield,
but it was the first Protestant place of worship erected on the River
St. John.
In the order of survey of the Township of Maugerville, made by the
Government of Nova Scotia in 1761, were the words "You shall Reserve
four Lots in the Township, for Publick use, one as a Glebe for the
Church of England, one of the Dissenting Protestants, one for the
maintenance of a School, and one for the first settled minister in the
Place."
In accordance with this arrangement Lot No. 15, where the Sheffield
Congregational church now stands, was fixed on in the year 1764 as a
glebe for the "Dissenting Protestants." Improvements were made upon
the lot and a part of it used as a burial ground. The first meeting
house, however, was not built there. It probably stood on lot 13, the
property of Jeremiah Burpee and later of h
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