eported in favor of "setting the meeting-house
near the high bridge, under the hill" (the place the out-of-town
committee had proposed). This report was accepted, sixty-one to
forty-seven. A town meeting was therefore called Jan. 8, 1795, to choose
a committee to purchase the land agreed upon; but at the meeting the
town refused to choose such a committee, and so ended the plan of
building a meeting-house there.

Jan. 26, 1795, the town voted "to erect a meeting-house on the town's
land they purchased of Thomas Boynton, about five rods south-west from a
large white oak tree, and to pattern it after the Leominster
meeting-house." It was to be completed by the last day of December,
1796.

Feb. 9, 1795, the town chose a committee of three "to view Ashburnham
meeting-house, and take a plan of the inside, and consult with Asa
Kendall of Ashby for the mode of finishing the inside, and laying a plan
for building the house." A week later the report of this committee was
heard and accepted, and it was voted to pattern the new house after the
one in Ashburnham. "Likewise voted to have the length of said house
sixty-two by forty-eight feet, the posts to said house to be
twenty-seven feet in length, and that the undertaker to build the house
give bonds, with good bondsmen, to fulfil the contract." The contract
was given to John Putman, Jr. Then followed other town meetings which
regulated the size of joists to be used, and other minor matters that
need not be here dwelt upon, Sept. 1, 1795, a committee of five was
chosen "to stake out and oversee the clearing and levelling of the
meeting-house spot for the underpinning on the town land." At this
meeting it was also voted "that the Selectmen lay out a four-rod road in
the best place to accommodate the travel to the new meeting-house spot."

At this time plans seem to have been perfected, and the prospect of a
new house on the town land tolerably assured; but Oct. 19, 1795,
everything was completely upset. On that day a meeting was called "to
know the sense of the town whether the former vote in placing said
meeting-house should be altered." After some wrangling, it was decided
by a vote of forty-four to thirty "to place the new meeting-house at the
crotch of the roads, near Capt. William Brown's house" (very near the
present junction of Main, Mechanic, and Academy Streets). This decision
was final. It is rather difficult to see how it happened to be, for this
site was a little ea