From left: North Hall & South Hall.
from his dwelling, where Mr. Theron Pomeroy now lives, for more than a mile straight to the park, where the first meeting-house was built, thus perhaps determining its location and creating a center. The thrilling experiences which these people shared together while their fortunes were one were not few, and most of them were such as tried men's souls.
These early heroes were jealously observant of Sabbath services, which for more than a hundred years were attended at Northampton, and later sometimes at Southampton; and journeys to and fro must be made through summer's heat and winter's sold, either on foot or sometimes on horseback. Later, sleighs came into use, but until after 1800, it is said there were no wagons in the town, and their introduction about 1810 was regarded with much interest. They were the automobiles of the period.
That the people reverenced the Sabbath and loved God's house is evident by their conscientious devotion to the services of that day and house. They did not "go to meeting" in the morning and stay at home in the afternoon; they went for all day. A great part of this town, too, belonged to the parish of Jonathan Edwards, whose sermons were not short ones, and neither were his prayers, through which both men and women stood up. Their Sabbath began at sunset or dusk on Saturday night. At this time all work so far as possible had ceased, and in the words of another "both parents, with their children, and the book of God before them, were often waiting, ere the setting of the sun, to cross together the sacred threshold of the Sabbath."
As the population grew in numbers here, they began to think about church, accommodations of their own, as well as to be in circumstances to attend to their business affairs with convenience. For eighty-seven years all interests had been one with the mother town, then, in 1753, Southampton had been set off' twenty-five years later Westhampton had been set off, and on June 17, 1785; a tract made up from both Northampton and Southampton, was made over into Easthampton, and Robert Breck, Esq., was empowered to issue his warrant, directed to a principal inhabitant instructing him to warn the citizens to assemble for choice of officers. He directed this warrant to Benjamin Lyman, who called Easthampton's first town meeting on July 4, 1785, at the house of Landlord Captain Joseph Clapp.
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