THE CHURCH GATHERING

From the Archives of the First Parish Click for text In the fall of 1635, there came to Newtowne a new company of settlers under the guidance of Thomas Shepard. They purchased the properties of the Hooker company, who were then preparing to leave for Connecticut. On February 1, 1636, they gathered a new church, as described in detail in the journal of Governor John WInthrop. The ordination of Shepard as minister of the newly-gathered church soon followed. In 1637, the college established at Newtowne, where Shepard and his church were known to be free of the errors ascribed to Anne Hutchinson, then agitating the little colony. Shepard, indeed, had presided of the synod at which those errors were condemned. Thomas Shepard was remembered for his winning personality as well as for his evangelical preaching. His contemporary Edward Johnson described him thus: "that gratious sweete Heavenly minded, and soule-ravishing Minister, Mr. Thomas Shepheard, in whose soule the Lord shed abroad his love so abundantly, that thousands of souls have cause to blesse God for him, even at this very day, who are the Seale of his Ministry, and hee a man of a thousand, indeed with abundance of true saving knowledge for himselfe and others, yet his naturall Parts were weake, but spent to the full."

The above handwritten manuscript is from the journal of John Winthrop, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click for text The Shepard House from The Founding of Harvard University; Harvard University Press

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