THE MEETING HOUSE BELL AND HOW IT CAME THERE. 15 



Roger Conant presented a moving appeal to the General 

 Court for a change in the name of the place, and did not 

 attempt to disguise the chagrin he felt, that he " the first 

 that had house in Salem " had no voice in the naming of 



O 



the old or the new town. In this petition he was sustained 

 by thirty-four citizens of the town, which, considering 

 that the parish, when petitioning to be set off in 1667, had 

 but seventy-three adult residents in all, must have been 

 nearly the whole male population of the place ; but neither 

 the name of Thomas Lothrop nor of William Dixey is 

 among the remonstrants against the name of Beverly. 



Now the Beverly Meeting House, designed for church, 

 school and town purposes, was probably built before the 

 taking of Port Royal in 1654. It needed a bell, and it 

 got its bell in a very singular way, and in this very way 

 the parish also may have got the name of Beverly. A law- 

 suit grew out of the possession of this historic bell and 

 the Court records of 1679 throw curious side-lights upon 

 the interesting question of the new town's christening. 



Dixey's house, as we have seen, was near the ferry, and 

 as late as "1st llth mo. 1645, he is still "Ensign Wm. 

 Dixie now fferyman." For years he was an innholder 

 and his supposed location is on the high ground at the 

 junction of what are now Cabot and Davis streets, where 

 he was a very extensive landholder. At some time be- 

 tween the taking of Port Royal by Major General Sedg- 

 wick, Aug. 16, 1654, and his departure from Boston for 

 England, late in October or in November, 1654, he with 

 his Lieutenant, John Leverett, on their way home from 

 the East, were together at Dixey's Tavern. Dusty and 

 war-worn v and fujl of their great success in the reduction 

 of these valuable French possessions in Acadia, no doubt 

 these two most conspicuous military chiefs of the colony, 

 they' had only the year before been selected by the 



