en sent among them two years before, being satisfied that he
could have gained their confidence and good will.

[99] Probably Canibas or Kennebec Indians.

The Reverend Thomas Wood closed a laborious and successful ministry of
thirty years at Annapolis, where he died December 14, 1778.

Some account has already been given, in the chapter descriptive of the
progress of the settlement at Maugerville, of the first religious
teachers in that locality, Messrs. Wellman, Webster and Zephaniah
Briggs. We shall have something more to say of their first resident
minister, the Rev'd. Seth Noble, when we come to deal with events on
the river at the time of the American Revolution. As already stated
the first Protestant church on the river was erected at Maugerville in
the year 1775. This building was at first placed on a lot the title of
which was afterwards in dispute, and regarding the possession of which
there was rather a bitter quarrel between the old inhabitants and the
Loyalists. In consequence the building was removed to the lot in
Sheffield where the Congregational Church now stands. An interesting
account of this incident is given in the narrative of the Rev. Joshua
Marsden, a Methodist pioneer missionary on the St. John river, who
says:--

"The Presbyterian [i. e. Congregational] chapel at Sheffield, was
a church-like building of frame-work, with a spire steeple and a
spacious gallery. This chapel had been drawn down upon the ice of
the river more than five miles: it had first been erected at
Maugerville, upon a litigated lot of land, which the society, not
choosing to bring to the issue of a law-suit, they determined to
remove the chapel bodily to their own glebe, five miles lower down
the river. The whole settlement, men, horses and more than one
hundred yoke of oxen, were present to assist in this more than
herculean enterprise. The chapel was raised from its stone
foundation by immense lever screws. Prodigious beams of timber
were then introduced under the whole length of the building; into
these were driven large staples, to which the oxen were yoked with
strong chains of iron. When all things were ready for a movement,
at a given signal, each man standing by his horse or oxen, this
great building, capable of holding eight hundred persons, was
drawn along and down the bank of the river to its appointed place,
where another foundation having been prepared, it was again raise