J. L. BELL is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. He is particularly interested in the experiences of children in 1765-75. He has published scholarly papers and popular articles for both children and adults. He was consultant for an episode of History Detectives, and contributed to a display at Minute Man National Historic Park.

Subscribe thru Follow.it





•••••••••••••••••



Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Old North Meeting-House Pulled Down

One of the many false notes in The Patriot, the Mel Gibson movie about the Revolutionary War, was the scene of British soldiers burning a church with American civilians inside. No such atrocity took place in that war, though some American attacks on Native American towns in upstate New York became quite vicious.

However, the British army did burn one prominent house of worship in occupied Boston. On 16 Jan 1776, selectman Timothy Newell recorded the start of what he probably thought counted as an atrocity:

The Old North Meeting house, pulled down by order of Genl. [William] Howe for fuel for the Refuges and Tories.
Yes, the army burned this church only after dismantling it, with no one killed or even injured.

Old North Meeting-house is on the left in this 1768 picture, marked B. The taller, grander steeple to the right is Christ Church, which inherited the “Old North” nickname after the war and is now commonly called Old North Church.

The Old North Meeting was the second oldest in Boston, preceded only by the “Old Brick” Meeting in the center of town. By the Revolution, there were two other Congregationalist meetings in the North End. The New North meeting had split from Old North in 1714, and then the New Brick had split from New North in 1719. In the years before the war, most Bostonians called Old North “Mr. Lathrop’s meeting,” after the Rev. John Lathrop (1740-1816), who became its minister in 1768.

Decades later, the congregation ascribed the destruction of their meeting-house to a particular enmity of a British general. An 1899 church history quoted the Rev. Thomas Van Ness this way:
I am not surprised to learn that as early as 1774 Lathrop, from this pulpit, said, “Americans, rather than submit to be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any nation in the world, would spill their best blood”; nor does it seem strange that the British general, in speaking of The Second Church, should call it “a nest of traitors.”
Lathrop did indeed say in a Thanksgiving sermon in late 1774:
Americans, who have been used to war from their infancy, would spill their best blood, rather than “submit to be hewers of wood, or drawers of water, for any ministry or nation in the world.”
The latter phrase was a direct quotation from the First Continental Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain, carefully cited in the printed edition of Lathrop’s sermon. The Congress in turn alluded to the Book of Joshua. So this sentiment wasn’t particular to Lathrop.

Lathrop definitely supported the Patriot cause. In 1771, he preached a sermon on the Boston Massacre subtly titled “Innocent Blood Crying to God from the Streets of Boston.” The 1842 History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, by Zachariah G. Whitman, stated:
In June, 1774, the Ar. Co. held their election, when the late Dr. John Lathrop delivered an excellent and patriotic discourse. It is related, that while Dr. Lathrop preached, British troops were in the vicinity, and a sentry was placed on the pulpit stairs, lest any thing rebellious should be expressed. One fact the compiler remembers, viz: to have heard Dr. L. say, when he was accused of advancing sentiments inimical to his country [i.e., the U.S. of A.], that no one certainly could doubt his patriotic spirit, for he had preached republicanism with a British sentry, armed, on the pulpit stairs, to watch what he said; but he did not mention the occasion.
As for the “nest of traitors” line, however, I haven’t found any source for that quotation earlier than the church’s 1899 history. Other writers in the same book use the phrase “nest of hornets” instead, and authors disagree about whether Gen. Howe or Gen. Thomas Gage uttered those words.

It’s possible that the British authorities really didn’t like Lathrop and the Old North Meeting. It’s also possible that those authorities pulled down the meeting-house simply because it was an old, deserted wooden building, and they needed firewood in the middle of winter. The 1 Jan 1776 Pennsylvania Packet printed a dispatch from Cambridge dated 21 December which said:
That on the 14th instant [i.e., this month] Gen. Howe issued orders for taking down the Old North Meeting House, and one hundred old wooden dwelling houses and other buildings, to make use of for fuel.
Lathrop and many of his congregants had moved out of town and were no longer in a position to object.

In 1849, the Rev. Dr. John Pierce of Brookline wrote a letter about Lathrop that was later printed in the Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit:
In 1775, when Boston was in possession of the British army, he set out to find a refuge in his native place [Norwich, Connecticut]; but, as he was passing through Providence on his way to Norwich, proposals were made to him to supply a destitute congregation there, to which he consented.

Upon the opening of Boston, in 1776, however, he returned; and, in the mean time, the ancient house in which he had been accustomed to preach had been demolished and used as fuel. It was ninety-eight years old; but was considered, “at its demolition, a model of the first architecture in New England.”

Mr. Lathrop accepted an invitation from the New Brick Church, to aid their Pastor, Dr. [Ebenezer] Pemberton, then in a declining state. And, after Dr. Pemberton’s death in the following year, the two Societies united; and, on the 27th of June, 1779, he became their joint Pastor. In this relation he continued during the remainder of his life.
So a good thing came out of the destruction of the Old North Meeting-House: its minister and congregation doubled up with one of the nearby meetings, and eventually the two became one.

5 comments:

Citoyen david said...

There is nothing on any sites about the North End Meeting House. NO other pictures or small excerts of people talking of going there. It is a piece of history missing! You know that the NorthEnd gang, I mean ... Sons of Liberty used the hall. Thanks again Mr Bell!

Anonymous said...

When I worked with the Boston Bicentennial Commision, we were told that the Old North Meetinghouse was the church in which the signal lanterns were placed, not the Anbglican Christ church next door. It was also a gathering place for the sons of Liberty. So after Revere's ride the British retaliated by tearing the church down.

J. L. Bell said...

Paul Revere was clear in his 1798 letter about the signal sent from the "North Church," which was how the Old North Church was referred to at the time. Richard Devens, who watched for the signal in Charlestown, described it as coming from the upper window of a church, which could only be the Old North Church.

There was a debate in the 1870s over whether Revere actually meant the Old North Meeting-House, and periodically people revive the argument in its favor, but the evidence points the other way. I discuss some of the debate on this blog.

Anonymous said...

I am related to Cotton Mather and Increase. I was reading about them being church leaders there. We're they gone from history before it was burned?

J. L. Bell said...

Increase Mather died in 1723, and Cotton Mather in 1728, decades before the meetinghouse was pulled down during the siege of Boston.

The North End congregation that the Mathers had led merged with the New Brick Meetinghouse congregation in 1779, with John Lathrop from the Old North Meeting as minister.

That meeting became Unitarian in 1802. Over the 1800s and 1900s it moved through various church buildings, and in 1970 merged with Boston’s oldest congregation to become part of what’s now called the First Church.