[p. 34] a committee to secure additional subscriptions to the building fund.
At a special meeting, April 7, this committee reported more than six thousand dollars subscribed, that other subscriptions could be had if a beginning was made, and recommended taking immediate steps to build a meeting-house.
Two locations on Harvard avenue, one corner Bower and Holton streets, both corners of High and Warren streets, one corner High and Allston streets, and one on Allston street (next above the corner) were considered in ten meetings covering three months. It was finally voted to purchase the lot corner Bower street and Harvard avenue (80 by 163 feet, at twenty-five cents per foot), this being the most central location.
A new committee of five was appointed to secure subscriptions.
Messrs. C. M. Barrett,
W. C. Craig,
W. H. Pettingill,
S. S. Leavitt and
I. P. Ackerman were elected building committee.
Mr. T. W. Silloway of
Boston was selected as architect, and the corner-stone of the new meeting-house was laid Saturday, September 27, 1873, with appropriate services.
Revs. J. T. McCollom and
Solon Cobb of
Medford,
Rev. E. S. Jaggar and
Hon. A. J. Phipps participated.
The first Sabbath services were held in the vestry on May 10, 1874, and the society's first meeting was on May 18.
January 4, 1874, the Sabbath-school received from the Sabbath-school of the First Trinitarian Church, Medford, a gift of forty-one dollars and seventeen cents, which was immediately appropriated towards the purchase of a piano.
A Hallett & Davis piano was purchased for four hundred dollars. It was in use in the vestry till the church was burned, March 4, 1903.
It was paid for by the proceeds of concerts, entertainments and spelling matches.
More than thirty-one hundred copies of the Congregationalist and Independent were collected and delivered to the Hallet & Davis Piano Co., for which it allowed us one cent each.
February 15, 1874, the school, at the instance of Superintendent White, voted its desire to be taken under the
