OLD HOMESTEAD 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN LORRAINE 



" Thy congregation hath dwelt therein." 



Hough's History of Jefferson County says: *'The First 

 Congregational Society in Lorraine was formed December 3, 

 1829, with Silas Lyman, William Carruth and Alfred Webb, 

 trustees. A small church was erected in 1830, which has been 

 sold to the Methodists." 



The historian could not easily have gotten further from the 

 facts. Hough was right as to the trustees of the society in 1829, 

 but he evidently knew nothing whatever of the church organiza- 

 tion, and his statement as to the final disposition of the church 

 building is entirely wrong. Haddock's History of Jefferson 

 County simply adopts the errors of Hough and magnifies them. 

 The historians' errors are so rank that I cannot let them pass 

 without correction. 



The people who settled the town of Lorraine were distinct- 

 ively a pious, church-going people, and long before they had a 

 regular place of meeting they had a church organization, and 

 usually a pastor. I find among father's old books one entitled, 

 ''Records of the First Congregational Church in Lorraine." 

 These records, written in a little home-made record book of 

 twenty-six pages, made of very coarse, unruled paper, unbound, 

 pinned together with an old-fashioned, round-headed pin, are 

 formal and official, and dul}^ attested by the well-known church 

 officials who kept them. 



From the record it appears that the church was formed in 

 the summer of 1804, by the Rev. Mr. Laesdel; that March 12, 

 1807, ''Deacons Lyman and Brown were chosen and ordained; 

 Rev. William Ruddle, pastor." My grandfather, Silas Lyman, 

 and great-grandfather, William Brown, were the deacons men- 



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