UP rO DATE. 509 



church organization, and a committee of three* to solicit 

 support for regular preaching services was appointed. 



Rev. Cyrus Stone, a retired foreign missionary, held 

 preaching services there in the year 1862, and within 

 eighteen months there were twelve persons who formed 

 themselves into the Evangelical Union Church. 



Deacon Damon and Mrs. Samuel Litchfield and others 

 of Scituate aided in the matter, regardless of both town 

 and denominational boundaries. The Pratt brothers, John 

 and Aaron, gave the land to hold the proposed meeting- 

 house. 



Citizens in the central village were appealed to, and a 

 fair which had been held in Beechwood was repeated 

 in the town hall to raise money for building. It re- 

 ceived a liberal patronage from all the inhabitants of the 

 town. 



In the year 1866, after our soldiers had returned from 

 the Civil War, the building of the Beechwood Congrega- 

 tional Church was undertaken, and it was finished at a 

 cost of over five thousand dollars, about half of it being 

 paid by citizens of our town. As a moral and social 

 factor in the community where it has been placed, this 

 meeting-house with its devoted attendants has been for 

 thirty-two years an important institution. 



The fifth religious organization to claim the support of 

 our people and to call forth their spiritual energies was 

 the Roman Catholic Church. The building called " St. 

 Anthony's Church," which now stands upon the old 

 Jacob's Meadow, South Main Street, was begun in the 

 year 1875. But for about thirteen years before this build- 

 ing was undertaken, services of the Roman Catholic 

 faith were held in the Brennock home at the Cove and 

 at other "stations." The need of this additional institu- 

 tion of worship has been already intimated, for the com- 

 ing of a score or more of Portuguese to engage in our 



* Moses V. Wallace, Silas Bates, and Henry Damon. 



