Quakers
“By 1690, the population of Scituate stood at about 865, making it the
largest town in the colony, with nearly 100 more people than Plymouth. Families
included the Briggs, Bryants, Baileys, Chittendens, Collamores, Clapps, Cushings,
Curtises, Cudworths, Churches, Colmans, Hatches, James, Kings, Litchfields,
Stetsons, Sylvesters, Magouns, Stockbridges, Palmers, Turners, Tildens, Manns,
Vinals, Witherells, and Wades. The importance of Scituate in the activities
of the colony is indicated by the predominance of Scituate names in the Plymouth
Colony records.
”Because of strong religious differences, Scituate had three meetinghouses by 1685. The first meetinghouse stood in its original location on the hill behind the Kent Street lots, overlooking the harbor, the cliffs and the North River. A faction of the First Church congregation had left to found its own church society in 1645 because of a controversy over the method of baptism. This group, which preferred baptism by sprinkling, rather than immersion, built their meetinghouse upriver near the present site of Union Bridge. This church was the first in Plymouth Colony to admit members of the Anglican faith.
”A society of Quakers built the third meetinghouse in 1678, at Belle House Neck, a peninsula in the North River near present Little's Bridge (Route 3A). This Quaker Society later moved upriver to the Edward Wanton shipyard and homestead farm. Much later the society moved its meetinghouse to the present location in Pembroke. Edward Wanton, a shipbuilder who became a Quaker, came to Scituate in 1661. He attracted many of this dissident controversial element in the region. They refused to take part in the town and colony governments or to swear an oath of fidelity to the king, would not attend the Congregational churches, did not register their vital statistics and conducted their own marriages. Harsh laws concerning the treatment of Quakers were passed in both Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies in 1658. The Quakers were repeatedly fined, tortured, imprisoned and banished from the colonies for infringements of the social order.”
(This information was taken from a publication by Cynthia Hagar Krusell; ISBN 0940628-43-0; entitled Plymouth County, 1685)
Dorothy Clapp Langley, Scituate Town Archivist