This is the fifth of twelve monthly articles celebrating our region’s first church from 1766 to 2016. "Lively Stones"is hot off the press, co-authored by Chip Griffin, Sarah Foulger, Bob Dent, and Jack Bauman. "Lively Stones" is the first history book of our Boothbay Region community from its founding in over a century and is available at Sherman’s, the church office, online, and in the Boothbay Harbor and Southport libraries.

Our last four articles summarized Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlement here from 1729 to 1798 and highlighted Boothbay’s first minister, Reverend John Murray, who sparked the first great spiritual revival in Maine, helped fight and negotiate during the American Revolution, and led the statewide fight for more egalitarian distribution of wilderness land. Boothbay’s church morphed, in 1798, with its covenant illuminating its church members, “lively stones,” who worshiped and lifted up each other, while their leading church crimes were intoxication, fornication, and adultery, amidst a growing seaport and farming community. In 1830, Boothbay churchgoers and its pastor, Charles, L. Cook, suffered together without uttering publicly the problem that their minister was gay.--Chip Griffin

By Sarah Foulger

The escalation of slavery and the bloody civil war that ended it were the most significant events of this time period. Maine, and perhaps Boothbay, provided critical routes along the Underground Railway, offering sanctuary for slaves. Protestant theology engaged every major issue of the time, including abolition, temperance and women's rights. Slavery was condemned vigorously from Congregational pulpits. New England writers, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, champions of individualism and freedom, profoundly influenced socio-political priorities.

In Boothbay, the mid-1800s were exciting in terms of growth and prosperity but conflicted by social change and war. Boothbay was known for its fishing, shipping, shipbuilding, ice, and health benefits. However, local prosperity sailed on swells of sorrow as ninety-six men were lost at sea during this time period, many with the surnames of prominent church families: Adams, Auld, Hodgdon, McDougall, Reed, Sargent, Tibbetts, and Weymouth. Devastating grief intensified during the Civil War as fifty-six local young men died in service to the Union. Referring to the new Congregational Church in Boothbay Harbor, Elizabeth Reed, in a 1948 historical address, wrote, “The generation of young men who fought in the Civil War and helped save the Union, grew up in this Parish.”

The church located in Boothbay Center, haunted by clergy woes, was challenged by the emergence of new churches on the peninsula. Increase of commerce in the harbor area of town placed additional pressures on the church, as the center of population moved nearer the harbor. Business and population shifts were significant factors in the formation of a second congregation. In 1848, forty-eight members of the original congregation formed a second church, known as South Parish, two miles closer to the harbor at the corner of Townsend and Eastern Avenues. The new sanctuary was constructed in 1846 by John W. Weymouth, a founding member of the harbor congregation. The church had a single bell tower that, to this day, houses a bell forged by Henry Northey Hooper, a well-known apprentice of Paul Revere. The new congregation would thrive and grow even as the original church slowly closed its doors.

While there was some sympathy for southern plantation owners within the shipping industry, there is every reason to believe most Congregationalists in Boothbay held strong abolitionist views. When Maine native, Hannibal Hamlin, became Abraham Lincoln's vice president, regional support for an end to slavery increased.Patriotism mounted early in 1861 by the secession of seven Southern states and the surrender of Fort Sumter. President Lincoln called for 75,000 men to fight. Each town in Maine was issued a quota of soldiers to recruit. Boothbay voted to pay volunteers in order to meet this quota. Special committees were formed to recruit soldiers and provide support for their families. The women of the church played a compassionate role. As Reed wrote, "The women of this Parish worked indefatigably for the U.S. Sanitary Commission and the hospitals, meeting frequently in this church to make bandages, and collected vegetables, money and supplies for the soldiers."

Rev. William Leavitt stood in the watchtower of the church through the devastating war years. Leavitt honored the fallen, committed their lives to eternal realms, and ministered to the heartbroken. Upon leaving Boothbay, it took him six months to recover from his traumatic pastoral responsibilities. Two notable losses were war heroes, Weld Sargent, killed on June 6, 1864 at Cold Harbor, and Charles S. McCobb, who died on July 4, 1863, the only Bowdoin graduate lost at Gettysburg. Approximately 73,000 Mainers served the Union during the Civil War, the highest population percentage of any state in the North. Heavy losses were felt in every town in the State, including Boothbay. Elizabeth Reed, in her 1948 history, stated that “more than 50 sons of this (Congregational) Parish served in” what she termed “The Rebellion.” 56 died.

The Civil War left an indelible mark on both church and community. It also strained the local economy, troubling the shipping industry with attacks and blockades and causing federal and local taxes to rise steadily. Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, came as a grief-laden relief. The State of Maine would never be the same, nor would Boothbay. It is fitting that the largest monument on the peninsula recalls the courage mustered by its citizens and the depth of sorrow that remained following the war.

During this chapter of the history of the Congregational Church, pioneering spirits led the way through dramatic social change, searing grief, and steady growth. By 1870, this congregation, known for its deep caring and mission-mindedness, was firmly planted at the harbor end of Boothbay, still one town. The church was filled with community-minded leaders, many of them veterans of the Civil War. Greater growth (tourism!) was to come for the Congregational church, now thoroughly consolidated in its present location.