and
others before mentioned) in the north-westerly part of the town, if that
appear cheapest for the town,--otherways are invested with power to
provide materials and timber for building a new meeting-house in the
prudentest manner for said town on said plat of ground." This committee
was instructed to report progress at the next town meeting.

This was a bitter pill for the east to swallow. Resolved on retaliation,
the east called a town meeting immediately "To see if the town will
comply with a request of a number of the inhabitants of Fitchburg, to
grant that they, together with their respective estates and interests,
may be set off from Fitchburg and annexed to Lunenburg." This request
was denied. The honest people, who, for the sake of peace and
reconciliation had favored the west at the previous meeting, were now
thoroughly alarmed. They held the balance of power, and were in a very
unpleasant predicament. If they voted to place the new house in the
east, the west threatened to form a new parish; and if they favored the
west, the east evinced strong symptoms of returning to the parent town
of Lunenburg.

Meanwhile, undaunted by this sudden squall in the east, the committee
had bargained for the frame of the new meeting-house being erected in
the north-westerly part of the town, prepared a site for the new house
on the land of Ezra Upton's heirs, and done sundry other wise things.
Nov. 17, 1788, a town meeting was called to listen to the report of this
committee. Their excellent progress was set forth with great confidence,
whereupon the meeting gravely voted not to accept the report, and added
insult to injury by summarily discharging the committee from further
service. This was done by the peacemakers who were at their wits' ends,
and this time threw their influence into the eastern scale. At this
meeting a committee was chosen to find the centre of the town. After a
survey, the centre was found to be on the land of one Thomas Boynton,
about five hundred feet north of the pound. Their report was accepted at
a town meeting held Dec. 18, 1788, and a committee, consisting of Thomas
Cowdin, Phineas Hartwell, Oliver Stickney, Daniel Putnam, and Paul
Wetherbee, was chosen to bargain for a site in the most suitable place.
This committee bought twenty-two and a half acres of land, a little
south of the pound, of Boynton, paying therefor two dollars and
thirty-three cents per acre, and the town approved this action.