Hello from Carolyn WILSON Hatfield at [email protected]  This is my first time responding to a genmassachusetts.rootsweb topic. I am responding to Betty Fredericks message to the same. There is a home still standing in what is now Danvers, which was called Salem Village in the 1600's, and  which was from early times and later, from time to time, was considered a meeting house. This home, built around 1650, was called Ingersoll's Ordinary or Inn.  It was built by Nathaniel INGERSOLL, the youngest son of RICHARD INGERSOLL. Richard Ingersoll is one of the original settlers of America.  He came to America (Salem) in 1629 upon the Mayflower II with, along with Rev. Higginson, and his family and five children from Bedfordshire, England. Richard's son, Nathaniel Ingersoll, is often referred to as Deacon Ingersoll or Lieutenant Ingersoll.  I am interested in this whole topic area and in "saving" this home. I am descended from Richard who is my 12th great-grandfather and from Nathaniel my 11th great-Uncle. My great-grandmother on my maternal side was an Ingersoll. My maternal grandfather's middle name was Ingersoll. You can see a photograph of this (I think 1650) home at: http://www.thehistorytrekker.com/travel-photographer/new-england When the Search Box comes up, put in Ingersoll's Ordinary or Ingersoll's Inn.  It takes a few seconds or so to load. You may also enter "Meeting House" and you'll come to a page that lists the Darling-Prince House which is on the site of the original Salem Village Meeting House. There are many photographs of historical New England at this website, including the ruins of the Salem Village Old Parsonage and the cart path to it. Fortunately or unfortunately, (as the case may be) this home has remained in private hands and is now for sale. You can see the real estate listing at: http://www.trulia.com/property/photos/3033413776-199-Hobart-St-Danvers-MA-01923.  There are many photographs of the inside rooms.  I found out too late about this home and its history and left the New England area without viewing it. Not that I have the money to purchase it but I would love to - not to reside in it but to restore it. This home should be, in my opinion, purchased by a historical society, (Danvers?? or Essex??) and restored to its original state - I have no idea how an organization gets the money for such a thing. It is surrounded by other residences that have been designated as significant to the history of Massachusetts. This home was a meeting house and home cited over and over again in many original and secondary sources in the history of Salem Village.  It was a place where the important (and ordinary) figures of the day met and ate and where the accusers and the accused in the Salem Witch Trials were held for questioning. It is remarkably good shape for being 360 years old. I hate that it should remain in private hands and its walls and room configurations be changed more than they may already have been changed, all in an attempt to bring this historical home up to modern standards.  I dare say, I would hate to have a 2011 kitchen be installed with granite counter tops!  Such a significant amount of history took place in this home and on this corner in Salem Village/Danvers that it should be saved. Previous owners have not altered much of the original structure which surely is a blessing. I don't know how to begin this process of saving this home but I do know there are millions of Ingersolls who are also related to Richard and Nathaniel Ingersoll, and who would likely love to free this historical home from its bondage to the private sector and have it turned into the historical landmark it should be. Does anyone out there know how to begin such a process?  (Because I only learned about this home and its history this summer I now wonder how I've gone so long without knowing about it???) I feel desperate to begin the process to get this home saved and restored and probably just need a push in the right direction to start.  I need partners in this process as I am a novice's novice when it comes to this kind of effort.  Someone with deep pockets would be quite useful!  ;-) Now, Referencing the topic discussed originally:  Meeting House, RE:  Mass Moments, http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=296 Information taken from:  http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/tei/Uph1Wit?div_id=d1e11330 Copyright 2002 by Benjamin Ray and The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.  The Salem witchcraft papers, Volume : edited by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (1977) / revised, corrected, and augmented by Benjamin C. Ray and Tara S. Wood (2010) Nathaniel Ingersoll was about eleven years old at the death of his father. His mother married John Knights, of Newbury, who became the head of her household, and continued to carry on the Townsend Bishop farm for several years. Governor Endicott, the friend and neighbor of Richard Ingersoll, took Nathaniel, while still a lad, into his family. In a deposition made in Court, June 24, 1701, Nathaniel Ingersoll says, “I went to live with Governor Endicott as his servant four years, on the Orchard Farm.” At that time, the term “servant” had no derogatory sense connected with it. It merely implied the relations between an employer and the employed, without the least tint of the feeling which we associate with the condition of servility. Here was a youth, who, by his father's will, was the owner of a valuable estate of seventy-five acres in the immediate neighborhood, voluntarily seeking the privilege of entering the service of his father's friend, because he thereby would be better qualified, when old enough, to enter upon his own estate. Governor Endicott's political duties were not then regarded as requiring him to live in Boston; and his usual residence was at the Orchard Farm, where he was making improvements and conducting agricultural operations upon so large a scale that it was the best school of instruction anywhere to be found for a young person intending to make that his pursuit in life. Young John Putnam, as has been stated, was there for the same purpose, under similar circumstances. Having built a house and barn, and provided the necessary stock and materials, Nathaniel Ingersoll went upon his farm when about nineteen years of age. Soon after, probably, he married Hannah Collins of Lynn, who, during their long lives, proved a worthy helpmeet. His house was on a larger scale than was usual at that time. One of its rooms is spoken of as very large; and the uses to which his establishment was put, from time to time, prove that it must have had capacious apartments. Its site is shown on the map. The road from Salem to Andover passed it, not at an angle as now, but by a curve. The present parsonage of Danvers Centre stands on the lot. But Ingersoll's house was a little in the rear of the site occupied by the present parsonage. It faced south. In front was an open space, or lawn, called Ingersoll's Common. Here he lived nearly seventy years. During that long period, his doors were ever open to hospitality and benevolence. His house was the centre of good neighborhood and of all movements for the public welfare. His latchstring was always out for friend or stranger. In a military sense, and every other sense, it was the head-quarters of the village. On his land, a few rods to the north-east, stood the block-house where watch was kept against Indian attacks. There a sentinel was posted day and night, under his supervision. The spot was central to the several farming settlements; and all meetings of every kind took place there. To accommodate the public, he was licensed to keep a victualling-house; also to sell beer and cider by the quart “on the Lord's Day.” This last provision was for the benefit of those who came great distances to meeting, and had to find refreshment somewhere between the services. To meet the occasions arising out of this business, he probably had a separate building. Travellers through the country stopped at “Nathaniel Ingersoll's corner.” The earliest path or roadway to and from the eastern settlements went by it.... Here Increase and Cotton Mather, and all magistrates and ministers, were entertained....when village business was to be transacted, or consultation of any kind had, the house of Deacon Ingersoll was designated, as a matter of course, for the place of meeting. Whether it was an ecclesiastical or a military gathering, a prayer-meeting or a train-band drill, it was there. Before they had a meeting-house, it cannot be doubted, they met for worship in his large room. We find it recorded, that, after the meeting-house was built, if from the bitterness of the weather, or any other cause, it was too uncomfortable to remain in, they would adjourn to Deacon Ingersoll's. The Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne K. Roach, 2002, pp.xxvi A few more clustered along the route to Andover where Nathaniel Ingersoll kept a tavern in the area that became a Village center, once a meeting house was built at its easterly crossroad. The Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne K. Roach, 2002 p. xxvii The Village, meanwhile, found its first ministerial candidate in twenty-three-year old John Bayley of Newbury. The inhabitants voted to pay him 40 lbs "for the present year" in November 1672 and determined, a month later, to build a meeting house.  Next spring, the Village men, under the eye of a professional carpenter, raised a thirty-four - by twenty-eight-foot frame on an acre donated by Joseph Hutchinson at the Village's center's easterly crossroad. A Delusion of Satan, Frances Hill, 1995, pp. 60-61 ....Another of the men in the latter group was an independent-minded farmer named Joseph Hutchinson.  In 1672 he had given an acre of land to the village as a site for the meetinghouse.  He now claimed it as his own again and started fencing it in.  When the Village Committee sued him, complaining that he "hath so hedged in our meeting house already that we are all forced to go in at one gate," Hutchinson responded by saying, "They have no cause to complain of me for fencing in my own land....[As] for blocking up the meeting house, it was they did it, and not I, in the time of the Indian wars....I wish they would bring me my rocks they took to do it with, for I want them to make fence with." The Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne K. Roach, 2002, p. xxix ....Burroughs was in Salisbury, Massachusetts, with other refugees when Salem Village approached him in November 1680 with an offer of 93-6-8 lbs a year for three years, then 60 lbs a year thereafter plus wood....Fortunately, the inhabitants voted to build a new ministry house on land purchased from Nathaniel Ingersoll, Joseph Holten Sr., and Joseph Hutchinson....A December 1681 meeting voted to specify that the Village owned the new parsonage and its lands, which were intended only for the use of the resident minister. A Delusion of Satan, p. 67 (these examinations and trials took place in 1692) italics are mine ....Meanwhile, the examinations of Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne went on for five days.  The women were kept in jail at night and brought by day to the meetinghouse, together or separately.  The proceedings were conducted with considerable fanfare, the magistrates riding from the town in a formal procession accompanied by marshals armed with spears. The number of officials involved is indicated by the expenses at Ingersoll's inn for the first day, March 1. The two magistrates, dining grandly as befitted their station, spent the considerable sum of eight shillings on dinner and drink.  The marshals, constables, and their assistants laid out three shillings on victuals and two more on cider.   ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 1:01 AM Subject: GENMASSACHUSETTS Digest, Vol 6, Issue 249 Today's Topics:   1. Meetinghouses of the 1600's (Ms Betty Fredericks) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 04:01:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Ms Betty Fredericks <[email protected]> Subject: [GENMASSACHUSETTS] Meetinghouses of the 1600's To: "[email protected]"     <[email protected]>,    MA List     <[email protected]> Message-ID:     <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Hello, ? Meetinghouses of the 1600's are not discussed on the Lists too often.??? But they are mentioned on the MassMoments? e-mail this morning. ? http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=296 ? As was said there, originally they were usually a very rustic building / house which was used for honoring the "Sabbath."???? So, probably very few in New England still exist,? unless they were built in the 1700's. ? I know a story about the original Meetinghouse in Billerica.???? Turned out it kept burning down.???? So, it was decided that there would no longer be allowed to have a fireplace in the building.??? And, the early settlers were "REQUIRED"? to be at the meetinghouses from sun-up to sun-down -? year round.??? So, sitting for 8 hours in a non-heated building during a cold, New England winter was not pleasant, and not healthy.???? So, in early 1700's (?),? the residents of the town built the? "Sabbath Day House."??? There the building was allowed to have a fireplace, and the church-goers were allowed to go there for coffee-breaks and lunch-break, etc.???? That house still stands.??? But, the only reminder of the original meetinghouse is a plaque mentioning it on the "Common." ? Chelmsford was also founded in 1655,? and I don't remember reading about their first Meetinghouse.??? Possibly there is a plaque mentioning it in their "Common."???? I know there is a tiny building on the Common which I think honors the very first Schoolhouse. ? One FYI is that the current Billerica Center where the Town Common is -? was the 2nd choice for creating a "Billerica Center."??? That is at the top of the hill - with the Concord River at the bottom of one side of the hill.???? The original location was at the bottom of another side of the hill - on the shore of the Concord River.??? That neighborhood has the historic name? "The Corner."????? Hmmmm.???? I wonder if there was an original Meetinghouse at "The Corner." ? Betty?????????????? (near Lowell, MA) ? ? FYI:????? The Billerica Historical Society used to have a web site with some good information on it.??? Unfortunately the web-master for it died unexpectedly taking the .password.? with him.??? So, other members of the Society didn't have any way to access that web site -? and copy it.???? So, a new web site was developed.???? They don't remember all the information and pictures which were on the original site.???? I remember that there was a page offering brief-biographies of some of the early settlers.???? I had contributed one for my ancestor, James KIDDER.??? But, when I was ready to offer one for my other ancestor, Simon CROSBY,? I was no longer able to submit it.??? :o(???????? But, while typing this morning,? I think there might have been a page on the site for discussing the "Sabbath Day House."????? I visited Sydney and Carolyn ABBOT during the 1980's who owned that house for many years.??? I believe their family still owns it.????? They initially met while both were members of the "Nashua Symphony Orchestra." ------------------------------ To contact the GENMASSACHUSETTS list administrator, send an email to [email protected] To post a message to the GENMASSACHUSETTS mailing list, send an email to [email protected] __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text. End of GENMASSACHUSETTS Digest, Vol 6, Issue 249 ************************************************