by Directed to
pay De'n Kendall Boutwell thirty eight Dollars and one Cent it
being for providing Rum and Shugar for the Raising of the new
Meeting house and this with his Rec't shall be your Discharge
for the above sum

D C JOHN THURSTON }
38 1 PAUL WETHERBEE } _Selectmen._"

On the back of this order is written the receipt and settlement as
follows:--

1796

"may y'e 12 Recd a Note in behalf of the Town of fitchburg of
thirty Eight Dollers and one Sent in full of the within Order

"KENDAL BOUTELL"

"April 19:1797 Order Settled with the treasurer"

Such in substance was the controversy about the location of the
meeting-house. The contest was characterized by zeal, obstinacy, and
bitterness, manifested equally by both factions, and so fierce was the
strife that the people of adjoining towns, for miles around, were in the
habit of flocking into Fitchburg to attend town meetings.

The edifice was dedicated Jan. 19, 1797, Rev. Zabdiel Adams of Lunenburg
preaching the sermon. This house became, a few years later, the church
of the First Parish (Unitarian) in Fitchburg, and stood until 1836, when
it was removed, and a brick church, now standing, was built by the
Unitarians on nearly the same site.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Torrey's "History of Fitchburg," Fitchburg, 1836.

ABBOT ACADEMY.[C]

BY ANNIE SAWYER DOWNS.

[Illustration: ABBOT ACADEMY.]

Joseph Cook says, "Andover, Mass., has founded several new Institutions.
Under the elms on Andover Hill is a study, in which a prayer-meeting was
once held weekly to devise ways and means of doing good. There
originated the first religious newspaper. There began its existence an
American Tract Society which now sifts its printed counsels, like the
dew, over a hemisphere. There, in imitation of a Scottish custom, was
instituted the American missionary monthly concert of prayer, in
response to the wants of an American Missionary Society, also
originating in Andover, and on whose operations now the moon goes not
down by night nor the sun by day. There had its birth the American
Education Society, which to-day rings its college bells all the way from
Niagara to the Yosemite. There was commenced the American Temperance
Society, which in our crowded cities has before it a work of which even
wakeful eyes do not yet see more than