The First Meeting House

One of the conditions of the land grant required the erection of a meeting-house. It was voted that a house be erected and that the sum of one hundred pounds be raised to enable the committee to go on in building a house forty feet long and of the same width as the Rumford Meeting house in Concord and two feet higher.
During the winter of 1738-9 the meeting-house was completed. The site selected by the committee was near the center of the cemetery, on the Plain. The pulpit is supposed to have been over the spot where rest the remains of Dea. Isaac Pearson, whose dying request was that he might be buried on the spot where the gospel had been preached by the first minister of the town and his successors. For thirty years the edifice was used for public worship and town-meetings. Upon its demolition, some of the timber was used in the construction of a stable, now owned by Mr. Emerson.

On May 16, 1739 the first meeting was held in the new meeting-house.

This first meeting-house in Contoocook was the twenty-seventh in the state. Those erected at an earlier date were in the following order :

MEETING-HOUSES IN THE STATE.
1633. Dover
1638. Exeter
1638. Hampton
1641. Gosport
1655. Durham
1671. Newcastle
1685. Nashua (Dunstable)
1706. Greenland
1711. Hampton Falls
1715. Newington
1717. Stratham
1725. Kingston
1726. Rye
1727. Derry
1727. Somersworth
1729. Concord (Rumford)
1730. Plaistow
1730. South Newmarket
1731. Chester
1733. Dover, 2d
1733. Keene
1733. Winchester
1734. North Hampton
1737. Hudson
1737. Kensington
1737. Pembroke
1738. Boscawen

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Last Modified on October 9, 2023
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