Pages 25-6

“The first warrant to organize the new precinct is issued by Jonathan Ware, Justice of the Peace, and is addressed to Robert Pond, Daniel Haws, David Jones, Daniel Thurston, and John Adams, five of the freeholders. They are called to meet ‘at the house the inhabitants usually meet in for public worship’ on the 16th of January, 1737-8, at 12 o’clock. When they came together they found everything to be done anew. No church, no minister, no meeting-house ! They chose the necessary officers and adjourned four days for meditation. At the next meeting they go resolutely at their work. They vote £80 for preaching, and a committee to secure it; another committee to provide materials for a meeting-house in place of the small building heretofore provided and used, to be forty feet long, thirty-one feet wide and twenty feet posts, towards which each may contribute his proportion; and especially sent a request to Wrentham for that money previously paid towards its meeting-house, and which they had sagaciously, by a vote ten years before, secured to be repaid to them whenever they should need it for a like use. It amounted to £130 11s. The request was at first refused, but four months after granted.”

Page 62-3

“The first warrant for organizing the precinct was issued by Jonathan Ware, justice of the peace, to Robert Pond, Daniel Hawes, David Jones, Daniel Thurston, and John Adams, ‘ to meet at the house the inhabitants of sd precinct usually meet in for public worship,’ Monday, 16th of January, at 10 o’clock, 1738. Measures were immediately taken for selecting a site and erecting a meeting-house, and for procuring a minister. The church, being present, acted jointly with the precinct in these ecclesiastical matters. The salary proposed was six score pounds, old tenor, to rise and fall with the value of money, and a settlement of £200 ; or, if preferred, £60 and the two parcels of land, containing sixty acres, granted by Wrentham at a proprietors’ meeting 18th April, 1721, ‘whenever they be legally set off.’ Another £100 was, in July, added to buy woodland for the ministerial fires. The deed of an acre of land from Thomas Man for a meetinghouse lot was accepted 11th September, 1739, and put for safe keeping into the care of Simon Slocum.”

Reference Data:

A History of the Town of Franklin, Massachusetts, by Mortimer Blake, 1879