10 



active in making roads, fences, and bridges ; in clearing and 

 plowing fields, and in the erection of houses for their families 

 left behind them in Massachusetts, with whom they spent their 

 winters. Each spring when they returned they brought with 

 them a chaplain. 1 Rest and divine worship were maintained 

 on the Sabbath. 



These settlers of Pennycook were a practical, serious, consci- 

 entious set ot farmers. They wrought diligently and patiently, 

 and in half a dozen years had built up a thriving town in the 

 deep wilderness, twenty-five miles beyond any other. They 

 did not know, as we do now, that they were laying the founda- 

 tions of the capital of a sovereign state. Their labors remind 

 us of those which met the gaze of tempest tossed Xerxes, as his 

 battered keels touched the Lybian shore, and he looked upon 

 the busy throng engaged in the building of old Carthage. 



Pennycook did not grow to a thriving town by slow accre- 

 tions, but sprang into perfected municipality almost at once. 

 In the autumn of 1730, a majority of the proprietors had become 

 settled residents in their new houses. 2 The next thing in order 

 was the organization of a church of Christ, as contemplated in 

 their charter, and, in the phraseology of the times, the settle- 

 ment of " a learned, orthodox minister." To this duty they 

 next turned their attention, in compliance with an order of the 

 committee of the Massachusetts General Court. 3 



II. 



Who was the first minister? 



The first minister was of old Massachusetts yeoman stock. 

 He was born in Woburn, on the 27th day of July, 1705- His 

 father was a founder and deacon of the church in that part of 



1 Rev. Bezaleel Toppan and Rev. Enoch Coffin had been employed to 

 preach to the settlers, before the settlement of Mr. Walker. — Bouton's History 

 of Concord, p. 93. 



2 It appears from an official statement that on the 20th. of October, 1731, 

 about eleven months after Mr. Walker's settlement, seventy three houses had 

 been finished and eighteen more partially finished, — Bouton's History of 

 Concord, pp. 1 28-1 31. 



3 " Ordered, That the proprietors or grantees of said town be, and hereby 

 are notified and warned to assemble at the meeting-house, (in Penny Cook) on 

 Wednesday, the fourteenth day of October next, at eleven of the clock in the 



