First Meetinghouse
First Meetinghouse
| Also Known As | Ammunition House |
| Address | Common |
| Built | 1660 |
| Demolished | 1708 |
| Other Lot Structures |
Second Meetinghouse (1694 -
1738)
Third Meetinghouse (1738 - 1797) |
Billerica's first meetinghouse was built in the winter of 1659-60, when the settlers had been in town five or six years, numbered about thirty families, and had just settled the Rev. Samuel Whiting as their minister. On November 9, 1659, the town agreed "that there shall be a meeting house built this winter folling: thirty foote Longe and twenty and foure foot wide, and twelve foot high: the studs to be 3 foot asunder," with "the sides and ends ... covered with bords and the Roof with thatch." Ralph Hill Sr., George Farley and Jonathan Danforth were the committee to hire the workmen. It stood south of the center of the present Common with its length east and west, probably near the triangle at Cummings Street, some distance southwest of the 1901 Meeting House Site Memorial.
The townspeople no doubt gave labor and lumber, but John Parker was the principal builder and advanced much of the cost. In January 1661/2 a committee of William Tay, William Hamlet and Jonathan Danforth reviewed his accounts, found 18 pounds, 15 shillings and 3 pence due to him, and recommended rounding it up to 20 pounds because he had paid out in better coin than the town paid him. The town settled the debt in land. In 1661 the General Court had granted Billerica 4,000 acres of wilderness land, and the town turned 3,000 acres of it over to Parker, in part "for satisfaction in full for charges due to ye said John about building of our meeting house." No record of the dedication survives.
The meetinghouse was the center of town life as well as worship, and its upkeep was one of the selectmen's standing duties. In September 1660 the town let the men who rode to meeting build horse sheds "below the Hill between the meeting house and Goldinge More's barn." In 1661 it named Lt. William French, John Parker, Ralph Hill Sr. and William Tay to sit in the deacons' seat and, with Mr. Whiting, to assign every other family its place, a task that caused "no little anxiety" for years to come. Early in 1663 William Haile was hired for 20 shillings a year to keep the meetinghouse clean and to dig the town's graves.
As the town grew the house became too small, and in 1679-80 it was shingled and a gallery built. Samuel Frost agreed to build the gallery on the beams, with a front seat, two seats on each side "comely closed with rails and boords," a pair of stairs, and a two-foot square casement window in the east gable, for 20 shillings in silver and 6 pounds 10 shillings in the town rate. It served for fourteen more years. On December 8, 1693 the town voted to build a new meetinghouse, with the Reading meetinghouse as the pattern, and the Second Meetinghouse was raised in July 1694. The old house was kept. In May 1703, during Queen Anne's War, "Complaint being made of the want of a watch house," a committee viewed the old meetinghouse and reported that it could be made comfortable "to answer the end of the same," and the town approved. That summer the town's stock of ammunition, in Capt. Danforth's keeping, was counted and handed out to the inhabitants in fear of attack. "After this military use of the old meeting-house," Hazen wrote, "it stood until 1708 and was disposed of."