Excerpt from Historical Manual of the West Church and Parish in Andover, Massachusetts: With the Complete Roll of the Members of the Church; December Fifth, 1826-1926 Parish, agitation to this end began among the people living in this part of the town. The primary cause of the agitation was the distance of many of the people from the meeting-house. Ou June 5, 1771, the ties with the venerable Reverend Samuel Phillips, the minister of the South Church, were broken by his death, at the age of eighty-one years, after a ministry with the church of sixty years. Moreover, in September of that year, the parish began to discuss the building of a new meeting house. To many persons living in the West part of the town, who naturally were unwilling to be taxed for a new place of worship located inconveniently to them, it seemed a favorable time for securing a division of the parish. Their proposals, however, did not meet with favor, though, to preserve harmony, it was agreed to postpone for the space of ten years the erection of the new house. The Revolu tionary War ensued, which was a trying period for the churches. After twelve years had passed, the question of a new house of worship came up again in 1784. Then for three years the matter was under discussion. F inally, in December, 1787, the plan of building near the old site was decisively settled. This incited the people of the West part of the town to action. The following year, Mr. Isaac Osgood and others took the matter to the General Court, petitioning that body for the division they desired. Through the strong influence of Judge Samuel Phillips, who with others was chosen by the parish to oppose the granting of the petition, the petition ers were obliged to withdraw their petition and both the House and the Senate gave consent for them to do so. In order to satisfy the disaffected and preserve both harmony and unity, the parish afterward voted to discharge them from all obliga tions and taxes for the building of the new meeting-house, and yet to allow them the privilege of seats, provided they shall surcease all opposition to the measures for building the meeting-house, and shall continue their union and harmony with the parish as it subsisted before the measures taken by them for building a meeting house. This arrangement put to rest for many years all discussion of a division. The question apparently did not come up again until in 1826, in one of the closing years of the pastorate of Justin Edwards. 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.