Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. Civil And Ecclesiastical Organization And French And Indian Wars. We have seen, in the preceding chapter, that the Farmers' District, or what is now Weston, was made into a legal precinct in 1698, with all the rights, privileges, and duties which go with a precinct organization. It has been shown that, after some delays and difficulties which arose concerning the settlement of a minister over the Farmers' church, Rev. William Williams was chosen pastor in 1709, and that soon after, in 1710, the Weston church was fully organized by the choice of deacons and the signing of the covenant by the eighteen members who then formed the church. The church records are full and complete in all that pertains to organization and matters purely ecclesiastical, by which is meant the record of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. They are of great value to us of the present day. The careful entry of all things pertaining to church matters is in perfect keeping with the exalted character of its eminent pastors,—Williams, Woodward, and Kendal. With all the above, and valuable as the church records are to-day, we have no precinct records down to the separation of Lincoln from Weston in 1746, a period of forty-eight years. We shall find in the next chapter that the town after its incorporation in 1712 performed all the functions which may have belonged to a precinct down to the year 1746, when a precinct record was begun, but continued only for the period of eight years, when its records again are merged into the town records, and entirely cease to exist. Whatever precinct records may have existed, and probably did exist, previous to the year 1746, are entirely lost, along with the records of the town. The Lincoln petition to be set off from Weston was made in 1742, but was not grant...