This is the first of twelve monthly articles celebrating our region’s first church 250 years ago, in 1766, and its successor Congregational churches. Lively Stones: The Evolution of the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, from its Origins in 1766 to 2016, is hot off the press, co-authored by Chip Griffin, Sarah Foulger, Bob Dent and Jack Bauman.

By Chip Griffin

Our Townsend, now Boothbay, peninsula, was first permanently settled between 1729 and 1766 by very lively stones, primarily Scots-Irish Protestants from Northern Ireland. Recent historical scholarship features the doctrine of first effective settlement, which reveals how a small band of pioneers settling a wilderness area profoundly impacts the cultural geography of that area for centuries, no matter how many thousands of different immigrants arrive a few generations later.  These Scots Irish established their highly egalitarian and libertarian culture, along with their higher incidence of intoxication and violence and lower levels of formal education, than their Puritan, later Congregational, neighbors in most of New England. This Scots-Irish culture counts and continues to permeate the way we perceive, think, and act centuries later.

Both Presbyterians and Congregationalists joined reformed, or nonconformist, churches throughout England and New England. They agreed, in 1648, on the Westminister Confession of Faith, a declaration of their religious principles. But Presbyterians and Congregationalists agreed upon almost nothing else. Both Massachusetts Puritans, established since 1630, and Boothbay Presbyterians, arriving a century later, distanced themselves from each other.  Townsend, later Boothbay, Presbyterians settled here during the First Great Awakening, in the 1730s and 1740s, a religious rebirth that was arguably the spark that ignited the American Revolution three decades later.

In 1739, an intoxicated Edmund Brown murdered his father-in-law, David Bryant, near Mt. Pisgah and Lobster Cove. Edmund Brown was executed within weeks, but not before he deeded his Mt. Pisgah land to Townsend’s first settled pastor, who would not appear until thirty years later.

Reverend John Murray was a charismatic and popular spiritual and political leader, from the day he sailed to and landed in America, at 21, in 1763. Murray had departed his ancestral home in Antrim in the north of Ireland, after earning high honors at the University of Edinburgh, and performing ministry since he was 18. The immense and impressive Presbyterian churches in New York City and Philadelphia, the two largest cities in America, competed for Murray to lead their renowned churches.

Murray preached in New York and became a minister in the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia for two years. For multiple reasons, not the least of which were his close relatives and promises made in Townsend, Murray became the settled minister in Boothbay in 1766. He was one of only a handful of ministers in the eastern frontier east of the Kennebec River. Murray required and Townsend settlers petitioned and obtained from Massachusetts the town charter to incorporate the town of Boothbay, since the name Townsend was already taken.

This first Boothbay church was constructed and dedicated in 1766, 250 years ago. So 2016 is our year-long celebration of this sestercentennial anniversary of the birth of our Boothbay peninsula’s first church.

Reverend John Murray, an eloquent orator, tireless and zealous minister, and charismatic preacher, led, in 1767, an intense spiritual reawakening throughout Lincoln County. Murray’s evangelistic revivals took place in houses, barns, and open fields, often for two or three hours in several towns and hamlets. Many compared him favorably to George Whitefield, the leading English evangelist of the Great Awakening, a quarter century earlier. As early as 1768, the largest Presbyterian church north of Boston, in Newburyport, started pressing for Murray to preach there, but their lobbying efforts failed for over a decade.

John Murray also petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, as early as 1776, for Boothbay property owners. Boothbay settlers had for decades lived on, improved, and had deeds for their lands. Mostly poor farmers and traders, they were threatened with lawsuits by elitist and influential, Boston-based Great Proprietors, who relied on ancient and conflicting land claims.

Next month, we will focus on the goldmine of written Boothbay Presbyterian records, from 1767 to 1778, breathing life into these lively stones, many committing the leading church infractions of adultery, fornication, and intoxication, just prior to and during the American Revolution. We will view John Murray’s daring leadership during the American Revolution and how he argued for and almost succeeded in prolonging the American Revolution toward a more egalitarian distribution of wilderness land. We will examine the struggles of the Boothbay Presbyterian Church with no outside support during and after the American Revolution and see why the church became Congregational in 1798.