Old North Meeting House

Before the construction of the "Old North Church" (Christ Church, Boston), there was another church in Boston called the "Old North" (Meetinghouse). This Puritan (Congregationalist) meeting house was founded in North Square, across the street from what is now called "Paul Revere's house". This church was once pastored by the Rev. Cotton Mather, the minister now known largely for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials. It was also nicknamed “Mr Lathrop’s meeting” after Rev. John Lathrop who was minister in 1768.

There is some discord about whether the lanterns were hung in Christ Church or here due to the name. Paul Revere and his contemporaries were generally consistent about using “church” to refer to Anglican places of worship and “meeting” and “meetinghouse” to refer to Congregationalist, Baptist, Quaker, and other independent places of worship. Later Puritan congregations regularly referred to their buildings as churches, which is why in Boston we have an Old South Meeting House and an Old South Church, built in different centuries by the same congregation. The last link shows that this was a smaller steeple, and further inland, and due to the events of the day, this is unlikely the spot used for the lanterns.

This Meetinghouse may be what inspired the scene in “The Patriot” movie where British soldiers burned a church with American civilians inside. No such atrocity took place in that war. However the British army did burn down this prominent house of worship as recorded by selectman Timothy Newell “The Old North Meeting house, pulled down by order of Genl. [William] Howe for fuel for the Refuges and Tories.” The army burned the church only after dismantling it, with no one injured or killed.

There are conflicting accounts on whether it was pulled down out of enmity or because the building had been abandoned when people fled during the siege. (See boston1775 link)

Decades later, the congregation ascribed the destruction of their meeting-house to a particular enmity of a British general. An 1899 church history quoted the Rev. Thomas Van Ness this way:

“I am not surprised to learn that as early as 1774 Lathrop, from this pulpit, said, “Americans, rather than submit to be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any nation in the world, would spill their best blood”; nor does it seem strange that the British general, in speaking of The Second Church, should call it “a nest of traitors.” ”

Lathrop did indeed say in a Thanksgiving sermon in late 1774: Americans, who have been used to war from their infancy, would spill their best blood, rather than “submit to be hewers of wood, or drawers of water, for any ministry or nation in the world.”

The latter phrase was a direct quotation from the First Continental Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain, carefully cited in the printed edition of Lathrop’s sermon. The Congress in turn alluded to the Book of Joshua. So this sentiment wasn’t particular to Lathrop. Lathrop definitely supported the Patriot cause. In 1771, he preached a sermon on the Boston Massacre titled “Innocent Blood Crying to God from the Streets of Boston.”

(See Second Church of Boston for more on Lathrop)

What fruitage did these spiritual leaders produce? Mt 7:15-20. Consider John 17:16 vs Acts 20:29, 30. What would Jesus have said seeing this?

-Source Links-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_North_Church

https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2023/04/paul-reveres-midnight-ride-which-old-north-church/ Comment April 19 2023 Jnolbell and Chris child

https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2008/01/old-north-meeting-house-pulled-down.html