Excerpt from Early Massachusetts Marriages Prior to 1800, Vol. 1: As Found on the Official Records of Worcester County

The territory now embraced in Worcester County was occupied here and there long before its organization in 1731. In the steady march Of civilization those sturdy ancestors to whom, through warfare or distant journeyings this region had become familiar, had marked out a number of its most fertile spots for settlement that were later so oft left by will to worthy sons and daughters, who there found for themselves perma nent and happy homes. Such localities may now be known by the ancient townships, dating back even as early as 1653, when Lancaster was organized and named.

But the interesting and impressive feature of our early and colonial life in Massachusetts, here so briefly told, is that prior to any thought of an organized township, the Christian church, fulfilling to the letter the Gospel spirit, where two or three are gathered together, had already planted and erected its church, around and in which might center the best aims and ambitions of the humblest community. It gathered the isolated and scattered households for miles around together in an assem bly, holy in its purpose and far reaching in its aim. At home in the wilderness it brought to each lonely fireside comfort, consolation, good cheer. Its all pervading life and light conquered as nothing else could the red savage in his forest den, persuading even him to submit to its precious ordinances. The faithful pastor kept peculiar oversight of all these people from a supreme sense of duty which was not strictly and conscientiously fulfilled if somehow every name was not recorded by him among his baptisms, on his list Of membership, or the eligible among those by him joined in the sacred bonds Of matrimony.

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