Natick’s Eighteenth-Century Church: A New Church and Covenant, 1707-1729

When the Reverend Oliver Peabody began his assignment as a missionary in Natick in 1721, he encountered a community in flux. Fifteen years earlier, in 1707, the community (still populated almost entirely by Indigenous people) changed its political system to an English-style town government with a town meeting, board of selectmen, town clerk, and other administrative offices. Natick Town Meeting granted male and female descendants of some of Natick's earliest Indigenous residents ownership of parcels of land. In 1719, Indigenous residents established an English-style proprietorship system, which guaranteed them the right to sell land to each other or Indigenous or English non-proprietors. The proprietors also set land aside for ministerial lots. 

Evidence suggests that the proprietors openly welcomed Rev. Peabody. They petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to give him proprietorship rights in 1723 and again in 1724. They wanted to allow Peabody to build a house in Natick without traveling far to the church. Peabody’s rights did come with two conditions: 1) Peabody would preach in Natick for the rest of his life, and 2) his homestead would not exceed more than “one-fiftieth” of the community’s land. 

In the 1724 petition, the proprietors also asked the General Court for permission to sell land to six English families from Dedham who attended church in Natick. They lived closer to the church in Natick than the church in Dedham and did not want to pay ministerial taxes in Dedham. As the populations of English towns surrounding Natick grew, ministerial taxes often spurred English people to move to Natick. Some English settlers found that they lived closer to Natick’s church than the one in their town. 

Commissioners from the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel, which had given Peabody his missionary assignment, visited Natick in 1729. They concluded that the “Indian Church” founded by John Eliot in 1651 no longer existed. Church attendance was low and inconsistent, and many parishioners were not Indigenous. Together, the parishioners, Oliver Peabody, and the Commissioners, decided to create a new church and covenant. 

The new church needed at least eight “full members” due to a rule written by John Eliot. Since there were no written records from the “Indian Church,” it was unclear if any of the Indigenous congregants were “full members.” Five English men, including Oliver Peabody, who were “full members” of churches in other towns, were recruited to be members of Natick’s church. Three Indigenous men, Joseph Ephraim, John Brooks, and Joseph Ephraim, Jr., also became full members after they confessed their faith. 

On December 3, 1729, these eight men signed the Church covenant and established a communal church called the “Church of Christ in Natick.”  The congregation of Indigenous and English members shared leadership roles. Joseph Ephraim, for example, was elected deacon. By signing the covenant, they vowed to believe in God and expressed loyalty to the Church and its members. 

As James Morley explains on page 52 of From Many Backgrounds: The Heritage of the Eliot Church in South Natick: “Part of the new church’s mission was to continue the earlier effort to Christianize the Indian members and to ‘civilize’ them. It was clearly with that in mind that the Corporation and Harvard College gave their support” to establish the new church.  The last three articles of the covenant emphasized a commitment to stamp out “sinfulness” that echoed earlier efforts by English authorities and missionaries to assimilate and “save” the souls of Indigenous peoples. The covenant regulated the behavior of its members according to Christian understandings of right and wrong, and Indigenous traditions, rites, and cultural practices often fell under the category of “wrong” or “sinful.”

by Gail Coughlin

Read More About Natick’s Eighteenth-Century Church

Selected sources and additional reading:

Natick Historical Society collections.

English and Indian Church Records (Natick, Mass), Massachusetts Historical Society Collections

Massachusetts State Archives Collections

Morley, James W. From Many Backgrounds: The Heritage of the Eliot Church of South Natick. South Natick, MA: The Natick Historical Society, 2007.

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