Excerpt from History of the Shaftsbury Baptist Association, From 1781 to 1853: With Some Account of the Associations Formed From It, and a Tabular View of Their Annual Meetings And yet from various circumstances the chief labor fell upon the junior member. But still materials quite necessary to the correct illustration of the work were wanting, and efforts were made for months, to secure them, almost entirely without success, only as by personal application they were collected. Amidst the cares of an active pastorate, at Manchester and Whi ting, Vt., to which latter place the compiler removed in the spring of 1852, - has the work advanced toward completion during the past two years. The double labor of compiling this work, and performing the duties of a pastor, though in a small church, had become onerous, and hence the compiler felt that he must do the one thing, or the other. Either publish and circulate the work, and thus make it pay for itself, or else lay it aside as a valueless mass of manuscript that would not pay for the printing, and give his time and energies more directly to other duties. The latter, on various accounts, would have been more desirable to him personally; but an expectation had been awakened that the work was forthcoming; much labor had already been done that would thus be lost; and the difficulty of ever rescuing from oblivion many important facts connected with the rise and progress of this venerable association and its ministers, would be increased; - hence a moral obligation seemed to be laid upon him to go forward in the work. Besides making the matter of his duty a subject of frequent and fervent prayer to God, the compiler in April last spent some time in traversing portions of the territory of the Association, to consult with brethren, and secure greater accuracy in regard to some facts and events connected with the work. From the assurances given every where in favor of its publication, by ministering and other brethren, to whom he exhibited the, work in manuscript, he felt that Providence called him to go forward and fulfil as speedily as. Pobsi ble the commission of his brethren, by publishing and circulating the book. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.